Double O Nine Trips Up Trump: 0-9 at Supreme Court & Select Committee Subpoena
Beyond the childish outbursts on his teeny social media outlets, I’m not sure former President Donald Trump really cares what the House Select Committee investigating the events of January 6 thinks of him or does.
The Committee voted unanimously on Thursday to subpoena the individual at the heart of their investigation to answer questions about his role in the events following his loss at the ballot box in 2020.
Trump’s response, in the form of a 14 page memo meandering through his many grievances doesn’t say one way or the other whether he’ll honor a subpoena, though if I was a betting man I’d say the answer is no, even if he says “yes” publicly. He’ll set conditions and stall until this congressional year ends.
I’d also bet the committee knew what his answers would be and said “let’s pick at that scab anyway.”
From Politico:
It is almost surely a symbolic act. The odds that Trump will enthusiastically appear to make his case is roughly equivalent to Herschel Walker’s admittance into Mensa, and the committee’s writ will expire by year’s end, long before a court fight over the subpoena would be resolved. While it may make for full employment for cable news legal experts, it also has the potential to overshadow the most striking revelations from today’s hearing — that the Secret Service had days of advance knowledge about the potential for violence at the Capitol, as well as the steely resolve of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who reached out for help in combating the violence as it was happening.
At yesterday's hearing before the House Select Committee, three things were firmly established via video testimony and documents:
The former president planned on declaring victory before the votes were even cast. Trump’s former campaign manager Brad Parscale told the committee that Trump had planned to say he won the election, even if he lost, by July 2020. Conservative activist and unofficial adviser to Trump, Tom Fitton, sent a memo to White House advisors on October 31 including a prepared statement saying the former president would only recognize votes counted on election day.
Security services were aware in advance of January 6 of the potential for violence at the Capitol and failed to act. A Secret Service field office shared a tip among other members of the agency that was first received by the FBI, saying “They think that they will have a large enough group to march into DC armed and will outnumber the police so they can’t be stopped. Their plan is to literally kill people. Please please take this tip seriously and investigate further,” the tipster wrote.
Never before seen footage of Speaker Pelosi calling governors of neighboring states and the Pentagon in an urgent attempt to get the national guard mobilized and sent to the Capitol on Jan 6 disproved Trump’s false narrative that she “refused to call for reinforcements.” One Senator who’d been particularly vocal in denouncing Pelosi was shown actually standing nearby as she made the calls.
The former President’s other big loss on Thursday came when the Supreme Court unanimously refused to allow a special master in the Mar-a-Lago case to review classified documents. The unsigned order involved a relatively narrow dispute, but the lack of any dissents suggests that the court may not give Trump the protection he will seek from the Justice Department, should it end up indicting him.
It was revealed on Thursday that a long-serving aide to the former President was captured on security camera footage moving boxes out of a storage room at Mar-a-Lago both before and after the Justice Department issued a subpoena in May demanding the return of all classified documents.
From the New York Times:
In a court filing in August, prosecutors said they had evidence that “government records were likely concealed and removed” from the Mar-a-Lago storage room even after the Justice Department had sent Mr. Trump’s office a subpoena for any remaining documents bearing classified markings. That led prosecutors to conclude that “efforts were likely taken to obstruct the government’s investigation,” the government filing said.
We’re now less than a month away from election day, and I want to remind readers that the one thread running through all Trump’s shenanigans is a disdain for all the checks and balances built into our democracy, especially the electoral process.
The former President’s name isn’t on the ballot, but what he stands for is everywhere. It’s up to us to tell the world that people, not patricians, matter.
Email me at WritetoDougPorter@Gmail.com