Things seem to be unfolding rather quickly. Former White House aides and advisors are scrambling to cover themselves as they receive subpoenas to appear and produce documents.
It’s rare when lawyers — as opposed to their clients — take the Fifth Amendment. But Jeffrey Clark, the former Justice Department lawyer who reportedly tried to help Donald Trump overturn the 2020 presidential election, is now claiming the privilege against self-incrimination to avoid testifying before the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. He has just been joined in that posture by one of Trump’s main outside legal advisers, John Eastman.
The lawsuit comes after the committee signaled it would pursue a criminal contempt referral against Meadows because of his refusal to sit for a deposition in the investigation into the Capitol riot. Meadows alleges that the subpoenas are "overly broad and unduly burdensome," while claiming that the committee "lacks lawful authority to seek and to obtain" the information requested.
And apparently Mark Meadows had a power point outlining how to overturn election results.
The 38-page presentation, entitled "Election Fraud, Foreign Interference & Options for 6 Jan," is dated one day before the Capitol riot. It's believed to have been submitted by Meadows after he was subpoenaed by the panel in connection with the insurrection.
Hmm, what makes you think she hasn't already been deposed? The security response was covered in an earlier hearing.
So, let's just say, there were serious errors in the planning for security on Jan 6. Does that excuse the commander in chief from refusing to defend the Capitol? Is he excused from telling his followers whom he exhorted to "fight like hell" to stop attacking the Capitol police? As was stated last night, the press briefing room has a live camera available 24/7 that he could have addressed the rioters with. We know he still had his Twitter account. He had could have contacted the acting Secretary of Defense in the blink of an eye to shut things down. And he did none of those things for more than 3 hours.
I agree, he should have done something sooner. Would it have mattered? Maybe, maybe not.
Again, nothing new last night.
"Fight like hell"...yeah, right. Most people when they hear that understand it's not literally. We've heard Democrats say similar things.
As for Pelosi, was she deposed? Why didn't we see clip of it like we've seen others?
And, maybe she has nothing relevant to say. But being in the position she is in, with some part in Capitol security, we should hear what she has to say. it just shows us that getting everything there is to know out to the public is not the priority of the commission.
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21 hours ago, Beerman said:
Watching for the first time. I guess I had figured by now we were past that there was an attack on the capitol, and that Trump should have tweeted sooner asking the protestors to go home.
I guess it's titalating material for the Trump haters.
Most people aren't glued to political news. The point is to present the information in a coherent way for those who are usually busy living their lives. I think they've done a great job with that.
Also, they're creating a record which can be accessed in the future, regardless of the immediate emotional reactions of the present audience. Trump supporters focus on ratings and entertainment value because that's what he did.
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2 hours ago, Beerman said:
A few of you like to throw out the extremist label on me, but aren't able to articulate what makes me one.
I wasn't aware there was any testimony today. What did I miss?
I only watched briefly last night. When they started up with the "187 minutes" theme, you knew some good theatre was coming. Who says that? "Only 187 minutes left of my shift", or "my flight is 187 minutes long."
From what I gather, nothing new was learned.
How about those SS agents that were in the car when Trump tried to hijack the limo. Were they there?
It'd be interesting to here from Pelosi, wouldn't it? Have her under oath say what she did or didn't know about security plans for the day, or what role if any she had in making those plans.
But, we know this is only about damaging Trump. And, I think it's been effective.
If it makes the path easier fir DeSantis, or someone else who has a better chance of winning than Trump...well, carry on!
I would say that attempts to deflect away from discussion of the fellow who planned and orchestrated an attempted coup to seize lost power IS extreme. Intentional avoidance of the public hearings and ridiculing the proceedings and findings IS extreme.
These hearings aren't about damaging Trump, they are about discovering and publicizing the facts surrounding the attempt to overturn the 2020 election results. The details and facts of that matter are very damaging to Trump, revealing his unstable mental health and nefarious involvement in this un-American plot.
Do you think that Pelosi was helping Trump in his plan to disrupt congress and overturn the election results? Is that why you think that she must have taken some action to make the capitol vulnerable that day? Or was she helping antifa?
Do you think that a GOP sanctioned coup attempt is going to help Republicans at the polls?
Most people aren't glued to political news. The point is to present the information in a coherent way for those who are usually busy living their lives. I think they've done a great job with that.
Also, they're creating a record which can be accessed in the future, regardless of the immediate emotional reactions of the present audience. Trump supporters focus on ratings and entertainment value because that's what he did.
I had the same reaction that these hearing have provided a deep well of data for future historians. All primary sources...a real gold mine.
Doesn’t hurt that the public hearings are exceedingly well produced and pretty well written, though. The tech works, everybody gets their turn and actually wait for it, not a lot of interrupting and talking over each other. Not a grandstand in sight.
Still, wish I was a fly on the wall for the closed meetings. I wonder what happens when you disagree with Liz Cheney.
I’m watching it in bits and pieces. PBS, CSPAN and probably a few others have posted the full hearings on Youtube. Probably won’t finish all of them until the next round of public hearings in September. Just in time for the midterms. (These are not amateurs!)
The committee went on to explore a series of linked attempts to attack the democratic process at what amounted to its key points of vulnerability. That involved Mr. Trump and his allies mounting pressure campaigns against local officials in swing states, top officials in the Justice Department and ultimately Vice President Mike Pence, seeking to persuade them to disregard established norms and keep Mr. Trump in the White House.
With his options for remaining in power running thin, the president eventually called his supporters to Washington for a “wild” protest on Jan. 6, 2021, the committee showed. That event, of course, ended when a mob chased lawmakers from the Capitol and Mr. Trump watched from the White House, unwilling to use his powers to call off the rioters and quell the violence.
Quote
While the hearings have featured a wide-ranging cast of characters — grizzled local politicians, injured Capitol Police officers, young White House aides, even a tattooed former militiaman — at every step of the way, the committee has kept the spotlight tightly focused on Mr. Trump.
Again and again, the panel has painted him as both the schemer in chief and the ultimate intended beneficiary.
In its presentation about the effort to pressure Mr. Pence, for instance, the committee made sure to introduce evidence that Mr. Trump had gone along with the plan even after he was explicitly told it was illegal.
The committee also directly implicated Mr. Trump in the effort to cajole lawmakers into creating false slates of electors that showed he had won in states that went for Joseph R. Biden Jr. The panel showed this by demonstrating how Mr. Trump called Ronna McDaniel, the chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, to ask her to discuss the fake elector plan with one of his outside lawyers, John Eastman.
Quote
Representative Adam Kinzinger, Republican of Illinois, suggested another avenue of inquiry when he said near the end of the hearing on Thursday that the “militant, intolerant ideologies” and “the weird fantasies and disinformation” that Mr. Trump set in motion after the election remained a threat to American democracy.
“They’re all still out there, ready to go,” Mr. Kinzinger said, suggesting that the committee could examine Mr. Trump’s continued efforts after Jan. 6 to influence the election system for his own ends.
Trump and his movement represent a clear and ongoing threat to our republic.
One of the few Trumpists who seems to have really reckoned with what she participated in is Stephanie Grisham, who is Trump’s former press secretary, though she never held a news conference. “I don’t think I can rebrand; I think this will follow me forever,” she told New York magazine’s Olivia Nuzzi last year. “I believe that I was part of something unusually evil.”
They all were, everyone who kept that catastrophic administration functioning at a minimal level while Trump built the cult of personality that made Jan. 6 possible. It’s important to remember their culpability because Trump is probably going to run for president again, and he could win. If he does, Republicans who like to think of themselves as good people, who don’t want to spend their lives in the right-wing fever swamps, will be faced with the question of whether to serve him. They will see the former Trump officials who were able to rebrand despite sticking with him almost to the end, and they might think there’s not much to lose.
The GOP doesn't really require them to rebrand and they lose in GOP politics when they don't stick with the Trump election lie scheme.
Jan. 6 hearings, Day 8 updates: Trump on Jan. 7: ‘I don’t want to say the election is over’
He thought the violence of his loyal followers would make Pence crack, or delay the vote altogether.
To his eternal shame, as appalled aides implored him to publicly call on his followers to go home, he instead further fanned the flames by tweeting: “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution.”
His only focus was to find any means — damn the consequences — to block the peaceful transfer of power.
There is no other explanation, just as there is no defense, for his refusal to stop the violence.
That's why we vote. If he runs, the voters will decide, and imo they would agree with the writer of this opinion.
Let's not pretend though that Congress and the oval office isn't full of people who have done far worse to our country than Trump's few hours of inaction.
That's why we vote. If he runs, the voters will decide, and imo they would agree with the writer of this opinion.
Let's not pretend though that Congress and the oval office isn't full of people who have done far worse to our country than Trump's few hours of inaction.
How about an example of a politician who did worse than trump while he fiddled as rome burned?
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I agree, he should have done something sooner. Would it have mattered? Maybe, maybe not.
Again, nothing new last night.
"Fight like hell"...yeah, right. Most people when they hear that understand it's not literally. We've heard Democrats say similar things.
As for Pelosi, was she deposed? Why didn't we see clip of it like we've seen others?
And, maybe she has nothing relevant to say. But being in the position she is in, with some part in Capitol security, we should hear what she has to say. it just shows us that getting everything there is to know out to the public is not the priority of the commission.
It's all about damaging Trump.