POLITICO NIGHTLY: How to tell who’s winning Georgia

BY RENUKA RAYASAM AND TYLER WEYANT Presented by Stickers for voters sit on a table at a Cobb County voting location in Atlanta. | Getty Images SCATTERED, SMOTHERED, COVERED — The rallies have ended, the ballots have been cast, the tweets on Dominion Voting sent. Tonight — or later this week, when results come out — Georgia’s two Senate runoffs conclude, with control of the Senate on the line. The polls close at 7 p.m. ET. Before you turn on your TV and start scrolling Twitter on your phone, Nightly has the latest on the Peach State showdown. — Some background: Our senior campaigns editor Steve Shepard explains the latest polling as well as early voting figures and where you should be paying attention as results come in. (Steve also tweeted this great thread of POLITICO’s Georgia coverage throughout the election.) — Expectation setting: Tyler Pager and Megan Cassella reveal Bidenworld’s private skepticism of Raphael Warnock’s and Jon Ossoff’s chances. — Postcards from voters: Photographer Jonathan Frydman took a recent tour of the state and found many Georgians don’t feel they have any say in the election. — Your go-to links: The Georgia results page from POLITICO is your spot for the latest numbers from Brunswick to Blairsville. We’ll also have live expert analysis from our newsroom. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out at rrayasam@politico.com and tweyant@politico.com, or on Twitter at @renurayasam and @tweyant.   A message from Salesforce: The most extensive vaccine program in history is upon us. Distributing COVID-19 vaccines to the public fast and at scale can make a difference for hundreds of thousands of lives. That is why Salesforce is helping provide digital vaccine management using data-driven information powered by its trusted Customer 360 platform. Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, is using Saleforce’s platform to help equitably distribute billions of vaccines to 190 countries. Learn about secure digital vaccine management solutions at Salesforce.com/vaccines.   NIGHTLY INTERVIEW DIALING 4-0-4 — Both Donald Trump and Joe Biden held rallies in Georgia on Monday laying out the stakes for the Senate runoffs for their parties. Now that the end is finally here, Renu spoke with Atlanta’s mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms today about what she’s going to be looking for tonight as the results come in. This conversation has been edited. How will you be watching the election returns tonight? I have a few national interviews this evening, so I’ll be at home with all of my TVs on, paying attention. I’ll be going to the secretary of state website trying to get updates in real time. That’s the plan. So like us, you’ll be hitting refresh on the SOS website a lot tonight. I’m certainly gonna be looking at the metro area as a whole, wanting to see how strong the turnout is not just in Fulton and Dekalb Counties, but also Gwinnett County. And we’ve got to watch other urban areas across the state: Richmond County, Chatham County in Savannah. Then looking at those more rural counties. Trump was in Dalton, in Whitfield County yesterday. My 18-year-old actually went to vote today. So I texted him to ask him if there was a line. He’s 18, so of course he’s not responded to me. This is gonna be a nail biter. I think it’s going to be close. What do you think of this idea that Georgia is no longer a Republican state? Georgia is definitely a swing state. Every conversation I’ve had with President-elect Biden going back from the time that I endorsed him in 2019, I stressed that we could take Georgia with the right amount of focus. We’re trending younger. We’re a more diverse state. We could see the trend happening, in the same way as we could see the trend when we went from blue to red a couple of decades ago. There is a group that has specifically focused on turning out African American voters who did not vote in November. A group called Battleground Georgia. As of yesterday, they had turned out maybe 40,000 people who had not voted in November. The Republicans are doing the same thing. We’ve been trending blue for quite some time, but it’s gonna be interesting because Donald Trump brings out people who don’t often come out to vote. Tell me about your conversations with Biden recently. Something that I’ve talked with him about on more than one occasion is the need to address the mental health aspect of this pandemic in our community. The mental health crisis is our next pandemic because we’re seeing anxiety, depression, and we’re seeing it play out in our streets. We’ve got a massive uptick in violent crime and uptick in domestic violence cases. That’s gonna be an immediate need. We just had a great conversation yesterday, a pretty lengthy conversation after he spoke. For me it was a very emotional moment. Just watching him on the stage and seeing that it’s all come down to Georgia. For me, it feels like the longest election cycle ever. It feels even longer and more arduous than when I ran for mayor. As a country, we’re just all ready for the transition to happen.   GET THE BIG PRE-INAUGURATION SCOOPS IN TRANSITION PLAYBOOK: Inauguration Day is quickly approaching. Is the Biden administration ready? Transition Playbook brings you inside the transition and newly forming administration, tracking the latest from Biden world and the transition of power. Written for political insiders, this scoop-filled newsletter breaks big news and analyzes the appointments, people and emerging power centers of the new administration. Track the transition and the first 100 days of the incoming Biden administration. Subscribe today.     FIRST IN NIGHTLY THE BIG ASK — This hinge-of-history week kicked off with the leak of audio of Trump asking Georgia’s secretary of state to illicitly reverse the results of an election that he lost. It continued with a rally he used principally to traffic in conspiracy theories while unabashedly pressuring his vice president to side with him instead of facts or the Constitution. Now, on the eve of a no-longer-rote certification of the Electoral College vote, the outgoing president is demanding that Republicans in Congress go on record saying they’re more loyal to him than to the nation’s bedrock principles. Michael Cohen, Trump’s former fixer, whose fealty landed him in prison, feels like he’s watching a reprise of his own demise. “I warned them,” Cohen told POLITICO Magazine senior staff writer Michael Kruse . “I warned Mark Meadows at my oversight hearing. I warned the Jim Jordans,” he said, referring to Trump’s current chief of staff and other notably pro-Trump GOP House members whom he name-checked in his congressional testimony less than two years ago. His message: “I know what you’re doing. I know the Trump game plan, because I wrote it, and it didn’t work out for me. And it’s not going to work out for you.” The specifics of this particular moment are without doubt newly alarming — never, needless to say, has he attempted quite so overtly to subvert American democracy and its Constitution — but this also is merely the latest turn to a well-worn page of the old Trump playbook. He is gauging the strength of the devotion to him by demanding others perform ethically suspect, legally murky things that accrue to his immediate benefit while often creating lasting trouble for the doers. What Trump does in the end is to make people choose: Are you for him, or not? In or out. Yes or no. Pick.       BIDENOLOGY Welcome to Bidenology, Nightly’s look at the president-elect and what to expect in his administration. Tonight, as many of us hope to stick to dietary New Year’s resolutions, Daniel Lippman looks in the pantry to see what Biden’s diet is like: “He has very simple tastes in food,” said a former Biden staffer. The president-elect loves spaghetti Bolognese and is a big aficionado of other types of pasta with red sauce, with a person familiar with what he eats calling it a “mainstay.” A current Biden aide said the president-elect also loves chicken parm. “He’s a very big ice cream fan,” said another source. “He’s done a lot of OTR [off-the-record] stops at ice cream parlors,” such as at a Dairy Queen in Iowa, where he turned a Blizzard upside down to show how viscous it was. After Biden accepted the Democratic nomination at the 2020 convention, granddaughter Naomi Biden tweeted a picture of a carton of Breyers chocolate chip ice cream with a note: “Pop, Tonight, you eat from the box. Love, the grandchildren.” His granddaughters told the Democratic convention in a recorded video that “he’s always eating ice cream,” often vanilla with chocolate sprinkles. He’s also a fan of Jeni’s. He likes milkshakes. “He has the taste buds of a 10-year-old kid,” joked a former Biden aide. In that vein, a current Biden aide said that their boss likes cheese and pepperoni pizza. At one point in his Senate career, there was a week to two-week period when Jill Biden made pasta for him every night to see if he ever wanted to change up what he was eating, a Biden source recalled. "She was trying to see if he would get sick of it, but he never tired of having pasta and didn’t say anything," the source said. When Biden was vice president, he ate a chopped salad from the White House mess almost every day for lunch, which was delivered to his office, recalled the person. When on the road, he often ate Jif peanut butter sandwiches. Biden kept a fridge in his White House office where he would store drinks. He often has a Diet Coke with lunch. Like Trump, he doesn’t drink alcohol. One of his favorite drinks these days is orange Gatorade, and it’s in every green room that Biden enters. He told Us Weekly in 2016 that orange Gatorade was his favorite drink, leading to a Biden candle that smells like it . Before the 2020 presidential run, a rider to speaking contracts would require that “bottled water, Coke Zero, regular Coca-Cola, orange Gatorade and black coffee” be stocked in his dressing room, according to the Washington Post. Biden also required that he be served “angel hair pomodoro, a Caprese salad, topped off with raspberry sorbet with biscotti.” That revelation led Eater to write a story headlined: “Joe Biden Just Can’t Get Enough Angel Hair Pasta.” Biden’s favorite foods don’t seem to have changed much over the years. In a Q&A in the former Washington Dossier magazine in 1985, Biden listed “steak and pasta” as his favorite dinner foods, Diet Coke as his drink and fruit as his snack of choice. His “presidential aspirations” were listed as “strong; definitely interested in making a run someday, perhaps as early as 1988.” AROUND THE NATION PARTY LIKE IT’S 2003 — A year ago, California’s Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom proposed an ambitious $222 billion budget that explicitly drew a stark contrast with Trump and positioned himself as a future presidential candidate. This year he’s fighting for political survival, trying to fend off a recall effort that could prematurely end his term. In the early months of the pandemic, Newsom seemed poised to emerge as a governor who led his state through crisis. But rather than cementing his status atop California’s Democratic hierarchy, the virus appears to have chipped away at Newsom’s standing, California Playbook author Carla Marinucci told the Nightly today. More than 27,000 Californians have died from Covid. The virus continues to rapidly spread across the state with no signs of slowing. Hospitals in Los Angeles are turning away ambulances. In addition California has the lowest vaccination rate in the country. The blame doesn’t entirely lie at Newsom’s feet, Carla said. But the governor has lost his authority: Much of the state remains under stay at home orders but no one is really listening to him. His plan for the Covid vaccine has been criticized for getting bogged down in the details without actually distributing any shots. The pandemic has opened Newsom up to critics on the right, such as San Diego’s former mayor Kevin Faulconer, and those on the left who see a chance to make a move, said Carla. The recall effort is gaining momentum and diverting resources from Newsom’s 2022 reelection campaign. “Every day that goes by and people aren’t getting shots in their arms is another day he is closer to the recall,” said Carla. PALACE INTRIGUE SEKULOW DISSENTS — Trump attorney Jay Sekulow today shot down claims that Vice President Mike Pence has the authority to overturn Biden’s election . “Some have speculated that the vice president could simply say, ‘I’m not going to accept these electors,’ that he has the authority to do that under the Constitution,” Sekulow said during his radio show. “I actually don’t think that’s what the Constitution has in mind.” SPLIT INDECISION — The move to challenge Biden’s presidential win in Congress on Wednesday bucks not only the will of voters but also the wishes of prominent GOP leaders like Mitch McConnell. In the latest POLITICO Dispatch, Kyle Cheney reports on how the situation is creating a rift within the Republican Party that could last far beyond Trump’s presidency. Listen to the latest POLITICO Dispatch podcast ASK THE AUDIENCE Nightly asks you: What are you most hopeful about heading into 2021? Send us your answers through our form, and we’ll use select responses in Friday’s edition. THE GLOBAL FIGHT DON’T PACK YOUR BAGPIPES — If Trump thought he could escape Biden’s inauguration by playing golf in Scotland, he looks to be sadly mistaken. Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon today warned the outgoing U.S. president that playing golf would not be deemed an “essential” reason for transatlantic travel during the pandemic. Sturgeon told a press conference: “I have no idea what Donald Trump’s travel plans are, you’ll be glad to know. I hope and expect … that the travel plan that he immediately has is to exit the White House. But beyond that I don’t know. “We are not allowing people to come into Scotland without an essential purpose right now. And that would apply to him just as it applies to anybody else,” she added. “Coming to play golf is not what I would consider to be an essential purpose.” STAY TUNED TOMORROW — On Wednesday morning, listen to the newest episode of POLITICO’s Global Translations podcast. Ryan Heath and Luiza Savage explore what solutions exist in the global labor market after Covid’s instability.   A NEW YEAR MEANS A NEW HUDDLE IS HERE: Huddle, our daily congressional must-read, has a new author! Olivia Beavers took the reins this week, and she has the latest news and whispers from the Speakers' Lobby. Don’t miss out, subscribe to our Huddle newsletter, the essential guide to all things Capitol Hill. Subscribe today.     NIGHTLY NUMBER 24 The number of GOP senators, thus far, who have said they will vote to certify Biden’s election as president, according to a series of interviews and statements. PARTING WORDS ON THE MOVE — Tyler emails us: I am writing to you from my new apartment, one I moved into quite early this morning, gambling successfully that I would have enough time to work on an Election Day once I was finished. Over the summer, I helped one of my best friends move. He was in my small bubble, and in small groups, our bubble helped as we could. Boy, I thought, moving in a pandemic must be hard. I decided to one up him: Moving across D.C. during a pandemic … on the day of the Georgia primary … as thousands of protesters come to Washington. And you thought fitting that armoire in the minivan was hard. My initial thought in picking this time of year to move? It is the New Year, and required a fairly large new start. I jumped into the 2020-was-bad-2021-has-to-be-grand boat with both feet. But 2020’s energy bled into my bright optimism. I strained to hear movers through their masks as they asked me where sofas should go. I checked D.C. government Twitter accounts occasionally to monitor closed roads. I placed hand sanitizers around my new apartment as though I were running a Bath & Body Works store. My hope for a fresh start was dashed on a series of reminders that the past isn’t over yet. I suspect my next move won’t be as infected with its place in history, or its literal potential for infection. So I am deferring the hope I had for this new year’s move to my next one. Oh, and to my close friends reading this? I am deferring you lending a hand to that move, too.   A message from Salesforce: There are many challenges while delivering vaccines to fight the global COVID-19 pandemic, and technology will play a critical role in helping governments and healthcare organizations distribute billions of doses worldwide. Distributing COVID-19 vaccines to the public fast and at scale will make a difference for hundreds of thousands of lives. That is why public health officials around the world are turning to Salesforce to help securely manage their vaccine distribution programs. Salesforce is proud to help provide premier digital vaccine management solutions, which use data-driven information powered by its trusted Customer 360 platform. Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, is relying on Salesforce’s cloud-based services to manage information that will help equitably distribute billions of vaccines to 190 countries. With Salesforce, public health providers have a trusted partner for administering vaccine programs. Learn about secure digital vaccine management solutions at Salesforce.com/vaccines.   Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here.   Follow us on Twitter Renuka Rayasam @renurayasam Chris Suellentrop @suellentrop Tyler Weyant @tweyant Myah Ward @myahward   FOLLOW US

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RSN: Harvey Wasserman | Our "Schmuck" Godfather Threatens Us All

 

 

05 January 21

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RSN: Harvey Wasserman | Our "Schmuck" Godfather Threatens Us All

Harvey Wasserman, Reader Supported News
Wasserman writes: "In his infamous one-hour shakedown of Georgia's Secretary of State, wise-guy Donald Trump TWICE calls himself a 'schmuck.' It's a gross undershot."

You may be hearing clips of that conversation. But no American should miss the whole mobster rant that Trump has clearly aimed at us all.

Sounding like a Godfather hit man, Trump verbally derides himself for having supported Brian Kemp, the KKK-style governor who stripped the state’s voter rolls in 2018 to defeat Stacy Kemp. (Trump trashes her too.)

But Kemp won’t hand Trump Georgia’s electoral votes. Nor will Secretary of State Ken Raffensperger, himself a bigly vote purger.

Kemp and Raffensperger did all they could to prevent Georgians of youth and color from voting this fall. The huge lines marring the January 5 runoffs for US Senate have underscored their strategy of making it as hard as possible for “undesirables” to cast a ballot in Georgia.

But the Prez needs about 12,000 votes to steal the Peach State’s Electoral College delegation. He treats them all like cheap chips from the Don’s bankrupt casinos.

The criminality is breathtaking … and historic. Richard Nixon taped his own racist, anti-semitic Oval Office trash talk. He faked a refusal to offer his Watergate thugs a million-dollar bribe, saying “it would be wrong” while scheming to shut them up.

Meanwhile, he slaughtered thousands of American soldiers and untold Vietnamese in a hated war he’d promised to end.

In the hour Trump used to promise Raffensperger cement shoes, 100-plus Americans died from his virus. He, Giuliani, Brazilian dictator Jair Bolsonaro, UK’s Boris Johnson, etc. got “magical” cures while the rest of us die in droves.

Watergate insider John Dean thinks the Donald leaked this tape himself. “When the story first broke I figured the GA Secstate recorded and leaked it,” Dean tweets. “After listening I believe Trump recorded it (his voice is always the strongest and clearest, and it sounds like a speakerphone being recorded). So the White House/DJT leaked it. Trump no doubt likes it!”

Trump says he’ll sue Raffensperger over the tape’s release. But it’s a fake cover for the message he wants us all to hear: I can say anything. I can threaten anybody. Your alleged democracy does not exist. Your beloved ballots are confetti. Cross me and you’ll pay.

He knows the uproar will enhance his hit-man image, then evaporate. The moderate Republicans that forced out Nixon are gone, replaced by fascist Klansmen who love his foul tongue and lynch-mob mentality. The federal prosecutor who could’ve pursued charges has already quit. The core of the old Republican Party has long since kissed his ring.

Trump lost by seven million votes in November. Since then, he’s raised more than a quarter-billion dollars with no strings. He can pay off his mob debts. He can arm his thugs. He can call himself a “schmuck” for having backed a governor that now won’t steal a state for him. He has no intention of going away.

Kemp and Raffensperger are hardcore right-wingers. But to Trump, they embody the remnant “moderate” Republicans that ousted Nixon, another “surrender caucus” wimping out on his fascist coup.

The Don has served notice: This time, you will not be tolerated.

This hour-long rant and forever assault on democracy are the Mein Kampf of Trump’s class/race/age-based misogynist blitzkrieg.

It will not end on January 20th.

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Harvey Wasserman co-convenes the Grassroots Emergency Election Protection Coalition (www.electionprotection2024). His People’s Spiral of US History is at www.solartopia.org. He hosts California Solartopia at KPFK/Pacifica 90.7 fm Los Angeles, and Green Power & Wellness at (prn.fm).

Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.

RSN: Greg Palast | Stealing Georgia: Raffensperger Is No Hero

 

 

05 January 21

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Greg Palast | Stealing Georgia: Raffensperger Is No Hero

Greg Palast, Greg Palast's Website
Palast writes: "In this investigative film (produced by George DiCaprio, Thom Hartmann and Rosario Dawson, and narrated by Debra Messing), Raffensperger is exposed for using vote suppression Jim Crow tactics - even misleading a federal court to keep 198,000 Georgians from voting in Tuesday's Senate run-off."

espite the hype, an investigative report released today reveals Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger is no hero defending democracy from Trump.

Rather, in this investigative film (produced by George DiCaprio, Thom Hartmann and Rosario Dawson, and narrated by Debra Messing), Raffensperger is exposed for using vote suppression Jim Crow tactics — even misleading a federal court to keep 198,000 Georgians from voting in Tuesday’s Senate run-off.

The report centers on the lawsuit by Black Voters Matter, Rainbow PUSH and other voting rights groups to return these voters to the rolls in time for the election. It is based on Greg Palast’s investigation released by the ACLU of Georgia.

In the film, we see that the Secretary of State literally shut and locked his office in the State Capitol to avoid complying with a federal judge’s directive to meet with Palast, Black Voters Matter and their legal team to return voters before the runoff election.

The voting rights groups hunt down and confront Raffenperger’s Director of Elections with evidence of Black and Hispanic voters illegally blocked from voting — and hand him a list of 198,000 Georgians wrongfully purged from the voter rolls (including, infamously, Martin Luther King’s 94-year-old cousin, Christine Jordan).

* * * * *

Support our legal actions, investigation and reporting in Georgia to reverse partisan, racist voter purge trickery with a tax-deductible donation.

Our battle goes beyond January 5, 2021 and Georgia. This is a fight we’re in for the long haul until equal ballot access and voting rights are secured for ALL Americans!

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Greg Palast has written four New York Times bestsellers, including Armed Madhouse, Billionaires & Ballot Bandits, and The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, now a major non-fiction movie, available on Amazon and can be streamed for FREE by Prime members!

Palast's new book, How Trump Stole 2020 has just been published via 7 Stories Press. Order it now from Amazon | Barnes & Noble | BookShop.org or get a signed copy.

Stay informed, get the signed DVD of the updated, post-election edition of The Best Democracy Money Can Buy: The Case of The Stolen Election, a signed copy of the companion book or better still, get the Book & DVD combo.

Support The Palast Investigative Fund and keep our work alive! Become a monthly contributor and automatically receive Palast's new films and books when they're released!

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National Guard members near the White House. (photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

DC Mayor Calls In National Guard Ahead of Pro-Trump Protests
Ashraf Khalil and Lolita C. Baldor, Associated Press
Excerpt: "Bracing for possible violence, the nation's capital has mobilized the National Guard ahead of planned protests by President Donald Trump's supporters in connection with the congressional vote expected Wednesday to affirm Joe Biden's election victory."

Trump's supporters are planning to rally Tuesday and Wednesday, seeking to bolster the president's unproven claims of widespread voter fraud. “There are people intent on coming to our city armed,” D.C. Acting Police Chief Robert Contee said Monday.

A pro-Trump rally in December ended in violence as hundreds of Trump supporters, wearing the signature black and yellow of the Proud Boys faction, sought out confrontations with a collective of local activists attempting to bar them from Black Lives Matter Plaza, an area near the White House.

On Monday, Metropolitan Police Department officers arrested the leader of the Proud Boys, Henry “Enrique” Tarrio, 36, after he arrived in Washington ahead of this week's protests. Tarrio was accused of burning a Black Lives Matter banner that was torn down from a historic Black church in downtown Washington during the December protests.

A warrant had been issued for Tarrio's arrest for destruction of property, police said. He was also facing a weapons charges after officers found him with two high-capacity firearm magazines when he was arrested, a police spokesman said.

Trump has repeatedly encouraged this week's protests and hinted that he may get personally involved. Over the weekend, he retweeted a promotion for the rally with the message, “I will be there. Historic Day!”

At a November rally, which drew about 15,000 people, Trump staged a limousine drive-by past cheering crowds in Freedom Plaza, on the city's iconic Pennsylvania Avenue. And at the December rally, which drew smaller numbers but a larger contingent of Proud Boys, Trump’s helicopter flew low over cheering crowds on the National Mall.

The protests coincide with Wednesday's congressional vote expected to certify the Electoral College results, which Trump continues to dispute,

Election officials from both political parties, governors in key battleground states and Trump's former attorney general, William Barr, have said there was no widespread fraud in the election. Nearly all the legal challenges from Trump and his allies have been dismissed by judges, including two rejected by the Supreme Court.

Now with downtown D.C. businesses boarding up their windows, Mayor Muriel Bowser has requested a limited National Guard deployment to help bolster the Metropolitan Police Department. During a press conference on Monday, Bowser asked that local area residents stay away from downtown D.C., and avoid confrontations with anyone who is “looking for a fight.” But, she warned, “we will not allow people to incite violence, intimidate our residents or cause destruction in our city.”

According to a U.S. defense official, Bowser put in a request on New Year’s Eve to have Guard members on the streets from Tuesday to Thursday to help with the protests. The official said the additional forces will be used for traffic control and other assistance but they will not be armed or wearing body armor. Congress is meeting this week to certify the Electoral College results, and Trump has refused to concede while whipping up support for protests.

Some 340 D.C. National Guard members will be activated, with about 115 on duty in the streets at any given time, said the defense official, who provided details on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. The official said Guard members will be used to set up traffic control points around the city and to stand with district police officers at all the city’s Metro stops. Contee said Guard troops will also be used for some crowd management.

“Some of our intelligence certainly suggests there will be increased crowd sizes,” said Contee.

D.C. police have posted signs throughout downtown warning that carrying any sort of firearm is illegal and Contee asked area residents to warn authorities of anyone who might be armed.

Because D.C. does not have a governor, the designated commander of the city’s National Guard is Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy. Any D.C. requests for Guard deployments have to be approved by him.

The defense official said that there will be no active duty military troops in the city, and the U.S. military will not be providing any aircraft or intelligence. The D.C. Guard will provide specialized teams that will be prepared to respond to any chemical or biological incident. But the official said there will be no D.C. Guard members on the National Mall or at the U.S. Capitol.

At previous pro-Trump protests, police have sealed off Black Lives Matter Plaza itself, but the confrontations merely spilled out to the surrounding streets. Contee on Monday said sealing the area again was “a very real possibility” but said that decision would depend on the circumstances.

“We know that historically over the last few demonstrations that BLM plaza has been a focal point," Contee said. "We want to make sure that that is not an issue.”

The National Park Service has received three separate applications for pro-Trump protests on Tuesday or Wednesday, with estimated maximum attendance at around 15,000 people, said Park Service spokesman Mike Litterst. On Monday, a stage was being assembled for one of the protests on The Ellipse, just south of the White House.

Organizers plan to rally on Tuesday evening at Freedom Plaza and again all day Wednesday on the Ellipse, including a 1 p.m. Wednesday march to the Capitol. Expected attendees include high-level Trump supporters like Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Republican strategist Roger Stone, a longtime Trump devotee whose three-year prison sentence was commuted by Trump. Stone was convicted of repeatedly lying to Congress during the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

During the Dec. 12 pro-Trump protests, at least two local Black churches had Black Lives Matter banners torn down and set ablaze. Contee said the hate-crimes investigation into those incidents was still ongoing and that his officers would be out in force around area churches to prevent similar incidents.

“We will be increasing out visibility around the churches in the area,” he said.

On Monday the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under the Law filed a lawsuit in D.C. Superior Court against the Proud Boys and Tarrio on behalf on one of the vandalized churches, Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church.

“We will not allow white supremacist violence to go unchecked by the laws of the land," Rev. William H Lamar IV, pastor of Metropolitan AME, said in a statement.