January 6 Hearings Are Delivering the Goods, Slowly But Surely
“The only reason I know to ask for a pardon is because you think you’ve committed a crime.” –Rep. Adam Kinzinger
On Day 5 the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 insurrection turned its attention to the suit and tie component of the former-President’s scheming to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
It’s not a soap opera or a who-done-it smash hit. Thinking of the story of the tortoise and the hare provides a good way to view the committee’s work. Little bombshells roll out every day, just enough to keep the hearings on the front page.
I respect this approach. It ain’t twitter, and it ain’t snarky. There’s no circus to watch, just some public servants doing exactly what we think they should be doing in Washington DC.
Yesterday, testimony from three former top Justice Department officials described Trump’s unremitting pressure on department leaders as he demanded they lend credence to his unsubstantiated claims of fraud.
Congressional Republicans who asked for presidential pardons from Trump for their actions surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection included Reps. Matt Gaetz of Florida, Andy Biggs of Arizona, Louie Gohmert of Texas, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania.
The committee also heard testimony saying that Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama sent an email to the White House five days after the attack asking for a pardon for himself and all 147 Republicans who had voted to overturn the election
The country came perilously close to a full blown constitutional process, as the former President’s allies drafted a letter in late December intended to persuade state legislators to give legitimacy to fraud claims. News of such inquiries, the thinking went, could be used as a justification for postponing the transfer of power to Joe Biden despite his 7 million vote margin of victory.
The administration’s immediate goal was to get states to appoint alternate sets of electors to flip congressional certification of the results. The former president pressured the Justice Department to challenge election results in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin in the Supreme Court, witnesses said.
Based on the fact that there were FBI raids in four states this week targeting persons involved with this scheme, it’s safe to assume law enforcement was able to convince multiple judges of criminal activity.
Witnesses Jeffrey Rosen, Steven Engel and Richard Donoghue, who were all senior DOJ officials in the Trump administration, described to the committee how they met with Donald Trump in the White House to discuss what the former president said was election fraud. At issue was their refusal to sign off on the proposed letter to the states saying the DOJ had found evidence of fraud.
When they refused, Trump instructed them to write a letter saying that they were investigating significant fraud, saying that he and Republicans in Congress would take it from there. “Just say the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressmen.”
The Justice Department man who was then recruited to head up this desperate grab, Jeffery Clark, was a lawyer working on environmental issues. For several hours on January 4, White House call logs referred to Clark as the “acting Attorney General,” because of a plan to fire existing officials.
A deposition from former Trump White House counsel Eric Herschmann shows how even administration insiders thought this was a bad idea.
When Clark went to Herschmann and revealed his plan—to install himself as attorney general so he could send off letters to swing state legislatures informing them the department had found evidence of fraud—Herschmann remarked:
“I said good,… fucking a-hole… congratulations. You’ve just admitted your first step or act you’d take as attorney general would be committing a felony in violation of Rule 6 (c ).”
Herschmann added sarcastically to Clark: “You’re clearly the right candidate for this job.”
The threat of a revolt in the Department of Justice led by high-level officials also kept this from happening.
From Mark Sumner at Daily Kos:
"You're an environmental lawyer,” [Deputy Attorney General Richard] Donoghue said to the completely unqualified Clark in a White House meeting where Trump was trying to hand him the entire Department of Justice. “How about you go back to your office, and we'll call you when there's an oil spill.”
Overall, the hearing spent some time introducing the players, but made it extremely clear that the select committee has all the receipts. All the players. All the pages of the playbook. They know all the steps that were underway to make Eastman’s scheme a reality. How Trump tried to use the Department of Justice to spread false claims. How Republican congressmen lined up to help. How Republican state party members lined up to sign fake certificates claiming to be “duly elected” to give the votes of their state to Trump. And how Republicans came begging for a pardon after the Jan. 6 coup failed.
They have all the evidence needed to reveal a seditious conspiracy to overthrow the government of the United States and install Donald Trump as unelected ruler.
On Wednesday morning, Federal investigators carried out an early-morning search at the home of Jeffrey Clark, in connection with the criminal inquiry into efforts to overturn the 2020 election. The former DOJ official did what all good Trump loyalists do, got booked on Tucker Carlson’s Faux news program to whine and what-about.
Republicans on Capitol Hill are now blaming House Minority Leader Keven McCarthy for the absence of contrarian voices on the January 6 committee, a sentiment reportedly shared by the former president.
This dissatisfaction comes from the realization that the January 6 hearings haven’t included disruptive questions about Hunter Biden’s laptop and Hillary Clinton’s emails. And the vast majority of witnesses before the committee have been Republicans.
The January 6 committee will resume its hearings after the July 4 break, Rep. Bennie Thompson has said that significant new streams of evidence have necessitated a change to the panel’s hearing plans.
The existence of documentary footage taken inside the former president’s inner circle has the committee believing that there will be significant evidence to be found. It’s also likely that recently uncovered information about the involvement of extremist groups will add another day to the schedule.
A new Quinnipiac poll shows that 26% of Americans say they are watching the hearings very closely, while 32% say they are watching somewhat closely. In that poll, 64% of Americans also say they believe the January 6 attack was planned, rather than spontaneous.
Email me at WritetoDougPorter@Gmail.com