Investigation of the January 6th Insurrection Grinds On
Investigation of the January 6th Insurrection Grinds On
Hearings to be broadcast in prime time on Thursday
The Jan. 6 committee is expected to hold the eighth and final presentation in this “series” of hearings — how Trump did nothing during the 187 minutes of the Capitol attack– on Thursday in prime time (5pm PDT).
Chair Bennie Thompson will miss the hearing, having tested positive for Covid. Vice chair Rep. Liz Cheney will preside over the event.
Questioning will be led by Rep Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) and Rep Elaine Luria (D-VA). Luria told CBS News the hearing will focus on "Dereliction of duty" by former President Trump.
It was learned on Tuesday that the committee will keep operating past its originally planned end date of September, when an intended final report will become a “scaled-back” interim announcement.
The Congressman from Illinois promised this week’s hearing will "open people's eyes in a big way."
"I knew what I felt like as a U.S. congressman," he said. "If I was a president sworn to defend the Constitution, that includes the legislative branch, watching this on television, I know I would've been going ballistic to try to save the Capitol. He did quite the opposite. The president didn't do anything."
The expected witnesses will be Matthew Pottinger, who served as former President Donald Trump’s deputy national security adviser, and Sarah Matthews, the former Trump White House deputy press secretary. Both resigned on January 6th and cooperated with the committee behind closed doors.
Pottinger will recount his frustration with efforts to get the National Guard mobilized. Matthews is expected to speak to the efforts to get the former President to issue a statement. Both were working in the White House on January 6th and witnessed events there.
Last week’s star witness, former White House lawyer Pat Cippolone, will also appear via snippets of an earlier video deposition. He was one of the closest people to Trump on the day of the attack and one of the first to urge the former President to do something to stop the storming of the Capitol
The hearing comes nearly one week after committee members received a closed briefing from the watchdog for the Department of Homeland Security, telling them that the Secret Service had deleted text messages sent and received around Jan. 6.
A demand by the committee for those text messages will, according to media accounts, not yield any more than excuses about how they were lost during a reset of equipment used by the agency.
From the Washington Post:
The Secret Service’s text messages have become a new focal point of Congress’s investigation of Jan. 6, as they could provide insight into the agency’s actions on the day of the insurrection and possibly those of Trump. A former White House aide last month told the House select committee investigating the assault on the Capitol that Trump was alerted by the Secret Service on the morning of Jan. 6 that his supporters were armed but insisted they be allowed to enter his rally on the Ellipse with their weapons.
Trump told multiple White House aides that he wanted to lead the crowd to the Capitol and indicated his supporters were right to chant about hanging Vice President Mike Pence, all pieces of evidence that help describe his state of mind and what he wanted to happen at the Capitol that day.
Just Security has been compiling an evidence tracker, based on testimony provided to the House Selection Committee. Here’s their summation of where things stand heading into this week’s hearing:
Over the first five hearings, the committee had been presenting a case against Trump that implicated the same two federal crimes that a federal judge found Trump likely violated: 18 U.S.C. 371, conspiracy to defraud the United States, and 18 U.S.C. 1512, obstruction of Congress. In those five hearings, the committee amassed a mountain of evidence that, among other things, Trump knew he lost the election and still sought to procure phony votes, phony electoral certificates, and a phony legal justification for then-Vice President Mike Pence to execute the final stage of essentially a planned coup.
The sixth hearing and last Tuesday’s seventh hearing established a new element of these possible conspiracy and obstruction crimes and other possible offenses: violent intent. Hutchinson established Trump’s violent intent on January 6, and Tuesday’s hearing went back to the origins of Trump’s desperation: his loss of all legitimate avenues to challenge the election after the Electoral College met on December 14 and confirmed Joe Biden as the nation’s next president.
I would expect the eighth committee hearing to take those of us paying attention to a place where Trump’s culpability is beyond a doubt. It’s just the rest of the world, especially the Justice Department, that needs to be convinced.
Polls indicate that, while many Trumpanistas think the committee is a political witch hunt, they’re also beginning to regard Dear Leader as too problematic to get re-elected. This is a softening of support, not a change of heart. The hard core lack of empathy for others and a (manufactured) sense of persecution remains untouched for MAGAs.
MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow got wound up this week over a leaked Justice Department memo that she interpreted as meaning “nobody’s allowed to investigate anybody connected to a presidential candidate without his (Merrick Garland’s) permission, personally, as AG.”
Her point was that this could easily be interpreted to mean Donald Trump need only declare his candidacy for 2024 to shut down any potential prosecutions.
Wait just a cotton-pickin moment, said a raft of legal types. This kind of memo has been around for a while.
From Business Insider:
Trump considered announcing a run for president as early as this month, but he's now reportedly eyeing September. Regardless, he would not appear on the ballot until 2024, and legal experts told Insider an active candidacy would not likely stave off criminal inquiries and potential charges.
It’s easy for me to see why there’s plenty of angst over the Justice Department’s investigations. While 800 or so rioters are or have been prosecuted, it’s clear to anybody with two eyes that there were a lot more players at a higher level.
You’d think that, with all the reports of grand jury investigations, revelations before the House Select Committee, and accounts appearing in a slew of books written by DC insiders, that some legal actions would have been taken by now.
The Justice Department has just asked for money to hire an additional boatload of lawyers to work on investigations related to the election and transfer of power. I hope that means something’s coming soon.
The clock’s ticking. If the GOP wins big in November, you can bet the first thing they’ll do in January is muck up the works with Benghazi-type “investigations.”
And the January 6th Committee members will be in line for revenge from the Republican side of the Hill. It won’t be pretty, especially if the wingnut faction of the party takes the helm. People willing to look away while a mob calls for hanging one of their own ( VP Pence) aren’t likely to have a change of heart anytime soon.
Email me at: WritetoDougPorter@Gmail.com