The Fulton County, Georgia, district attorney’s office is demanding that John Eastman answer questions for the special grand jury investigating election tampering in the state in 2020. The former attorney for Donald Trump is pleading the Fifth.
According to USA TODAY, Eastman’s lawyers issued a statement stating that they had advised him to “assert attorney-client privilege and the constitutional right to remain silent where appropriate.”
“By all indications, the District Attorney’s Office has set itself on an unprecedented path of criminalizing controversial or disfavored legal theories, possibly in hopes that the federal government will follow its lead,” the statement reads. “Criminalization of unpopular legal theories is against every American tradition and would have ended the careers of John Adams, Ruth Ginsburg, Thurgood Marshall and many other now-celebrated American lawyers."
The attorney, infamously known for creating the bogus falsehood that Joe Biden didn’t actually win the election, is among such MAGA notables as former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, and whiny Trump lapdog Sen. Lindsey Graham. All were called to testify in front of the Georgia grand jury and all have put up a fight—mostly to no avail.
Eastman was behind the idea of sending a group of fake electors out into swing states in hopes of blocking the congressional certification of the 2020 election.
The New York Times reports that Eastman continued looking for election irregularities long after Trump was out of office. In one of a slew of previously uncovered emails, Eastman wrote, “A lot of us have now staked our reputations on the claims of election fraud, and this would be a way to gather proof… If we get proof of fraud on Jan. 5, it will likely also demonstrate the fraud on Nov. 3, thereby vindicating President Trump’s claims and serving as a strong bulwark against Senate impeachment trial.”
Kemp’s attorneys tried everything to save the incumbent governor from giving a sworn statement. But according to reporting from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution Monday, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney refused to allow the governor to skirt his testimony but did allow him to push it off until after the Nov. 8 midterm elections.
Giuliani tried to play the “too sick to testify” card but was staunchly shut down by McBurney and appeared in Atlanta on Aug. 17 to give testimony.
Graham is doing everything he can to avoid testifying to the special grand jury in Georgia, including filing a brief on Aug. 24 that reasons that the subpoena to testify is invalid based on a rarely used section of the U.S. Constitution.
“The Constitution guarantees that a Senator ‘shall not be questioned’ about his protected ‘Speech or Debate’—and yet the District Attorney insists that Senator Graham must submit to questioning to ascertain whether he can be questioned or is immune from questioning. That makes no sense,” Graham’s motion reads.
The search of former President Donald Trump’s Florida home this week was precipitated by a secret grand jury subpoena for classified documents served to him this June, according to new reports out Thursday.
This was first reported by John Solomon at Just the News and quickly picked up by outlets like CNN and MSNBC.
BREAKING: Attorney General Merrick Garland announces that he authorized the search warrant at former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property and has filed a motion requesting that the warrant be unsealed along with two attachments plus an inventory of the items seized.
Precisely what the attachments are is not clear at this time, but it is suspected that at least one of the attachments will explain what statutes were used to authorize the search.
NOW: "I personally approved to seek a search warrant in this matter," AG Garland says of the warrant at Trump's Mar-a-Lago property issued this week
On June 3, a prosecutor and a trio of FBI agents showed up at Mar-a-Lago for a meeting. The subject of that meeting was boxes with White House records housed in a storage room at Trump’s Palm Beach property. According to Just the News, an anonymous source said the meeting was specifically related to documents sought in relation to the grand jury subpoena.
That subpoena requested that Trump produce any and all documents that had classification labels, including any “mementos” or other notes and pictures he may have kept from his impeachment-marred single term in the White House.
Trump, who was not expected at the June 3 meeting, abruptly appeared and told the prosecutor and trio of agents he would comply.
Per Just the News, two eyewitnesses recall Trump telling the law enforcement group: “Look, whatever you need, let us know.” The agents then asked to look at the storage locker in the basement at Mar-a-Lago. Trump and his lawyers allowed the search.
According to Trump’s campaign attorney, Christina Bobb, a few days after that meeting, the FBI’s chief of counterintelligence and export control, Jay Bratt, contacted Trump’s legal team and asked that a padlock be installed on the door where the sensitive documents were kept.
What then followed was the disclosure of key information to investigators.
There were more boxes with classified information on the property. This was in addition to the 15 boxes the National Archives had retrieved earlier after much back-and-forth with Trump. The contents of those boxes, according to the National Archives, included classified or otherwise sensitive information.
This sparked the FBI to show up with a warrant, something agents only obtained after they were able to convince a magistrate judge that there was likely evidence of a crime that had been committed.
Publicly, Trump has continued attacks on virtually every institution, from the FBI to the Department of Justice to Congress and the White House, saying the various probes into his affairs and conduct are part of a larger “witch hunt” against him. His reaction to the search of his home has sparked a wave of threats of violence to lawmakers anew and has generated an intense new round of conspiracy theories about the “deep state” attempt to take down Donald Trump.
But Trump’s attorneys, at least when it comes to the records search at Mar-a-Lago, have been cooperative.
According to reports fromThe Wall Street Journal and CNN alike, Trump’s attorney Evan Corcoran complied not just with the request to padlock the door but also provided surveillance footage from Mar-a-Lago to authorities when it was requested under a separate subpoena issued to the Trump Organization.
The warrant for the Aug. 8 search of Mar-a-Lago contains mention of a possible violation of the Presidential Records Act, Trump’s attorney Christina Bobb, has said.
Trump, at any time, could publish the itemized warrant to potentially end the miasma of questions and misinformation swirling around the search, but he has not and is not expected to. The Department of Justice, as a rule, does not release warrant applications to the public, so it is up to the former president to offer this transparency for the moment.
Trump has dubbed the search a “siege” of his home by FBI agents, but those officers who showed up for the search did so quietly and discretely in plain clothes instead of their typical unmistakable blue jackets or with guns drawn, lights blazing. The meeting in June and the search on Monday have been described repeatedly by sources as “cordial.”
Three rooms were searched on Aug. 8. Agents took 10 boxes, according to the Wall Street Journal. The items taken are now believed to be held in Miami.
FBI agents are required under law to leave behind a copy of their search warrant when they conduct a raid. The warrant would also include an inventory of what items were taken, but even those descriptors could be vague.
The warrant would also typically itemize what possible crimes were committed.
It is the affidavit bearing details of probable cause that is key. This is the record necessary for a judge to approve a warrant, but it will remain sealed for now. It is only made public if charges are filed.
Jan. 6, 2021, was madness. Without a proper account of that day, the stain of its violence and betrayal, already indelibly etched into the national history, could continue to spread, shading and infiltrating every institution low and high until finally, this ‘great experiment’ collapses in on itself in a heap of dingy authoritarianism.
For the last several weeks, the Select Committee Investigating the Jan. 6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol presented its findings on the insurrection incited by former President Donald Trump now more than a year ago.
He is the only American president ever impeached for this betrayal, making him uniquely offensive since his actions obliterated the core of what the Constitution demands of presidents above all else when they take the oath: its faithful preservation and defense.
So much of what happened on the way to Jan. 6 unfolded in public.
Trump said long before Election Day if he lost, it was because the election was rigged. Many of his personal attorneys and members of his administration spent weeks promoting or defending wild conspiracy theories of voter fraud at press conferences, on podcasts, on the radio, or on television. This continued unabated even after the nation’s Attorney General and heads of the nation’s intelligence networks confirmed to Trump in public—and in private, as the committee showed at length this summer—that his fraud claims lacked credibility entirely.
It was an all-out assault of disinformation and propaganda aimed at convincing the American public he was not defeated after a single term in the White House where his tenure and popularity were regularly marred by the cruelty of his policies and the consequences of his own actions, like impeachment for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.
Trump’s speech at the Ellipse on Jan. 6 was a tirade but it was also an open invitation to his most devoted followers to help him retain power by force despite losing the 2020 election popularly and by way of the Electoral College. And when the debris, blood, sweat, urine, and feces were finally cleared away from the Capitol after the mob stormed it, Trump’s second impeachment followed.
The case was, as Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., told Daily Kos during an interview this week, “made almost completely with facts from the public record, and the statements and actions Trump made.”
“It was overwhelming,” Raskin said. “Although the incitement was plain to see and the violence was bloody and fresh on people’s minds, what we did not have was the detailed account of the president’s step-by-step effort to orchestrate a political coup against the election and essentially set aside Joe Biden’s seven-million-vote victory.”
Kevin Seefried of Delaware, pictured here, was found guilty of obstruction of Congress among several other charges in June. He used the Confederate flag to jab at U.S. Capitol Police officer Eugene Goodman. Goodman was the officer responsible for luring rioters away from lawmakers by mere seconds and inches. Seefried is sentenced in September.
Now, that “detailed account” has been presented to millions of Americans.
An average of 13 million broadcast viewers watched per hearing day, according to Nielsen, hearing evidence at each juncture about how Trump: 1) worked to overturn the election results by promoting a lie; 2) attempted to install his allies at the Justice Department when legal avenues to assert his victory were defeated; 3) advanced a fake elector strategy to pressure the vice president to stop Congress from certifying the count; 4) invited a crowd he understood to be armed to march to the Capitol with him during the Joint Session of Congress; and 5) abandoned his sworn duty to protect the United States by sitting idly for nearly three hours while ignoring pleas for help as a mob erected a gallows, issued calls to hang the vice president and Speaker of the House, stormed the halls of Congress and attacked hundreds of outnumbered police officers with a barrage of lethal weapons.
During its two primetime sessions alone, a cumulative 30 million (or more) broadcast viewers heard this evidence—and then some.
Raskin told Daily Kos in April he hoped the hearings would become a way of arming the American public with the tools of “intellectual self-defense against the authoritarian and fascistic policies that have been unleashed in this country.”
”These hearings have been so devastating for Trump and his followers because they have shown everyone exactly every effort he undertook to overturn the election and the Constitutional order. And almost all of it was based on evidence brought forth by Republican witnesses,” Raskin said by phone this week.
That is true, despite what disinformation may be flowing out from right-wing platforms.
The testimony during the hearings overwhelmingly featured Republican lawyers, judges, political commentators, election attorneys, Trump-appointed U.S. Attorneys, a Republican city commissioner, and a Trump campaign manager, to name but a few.
”I think [the hearings] have moved the whole spectrum of public opinion closer to the facts of what actually happened. These people who were already convinced of Donald Trump’s culpability now have a lot more evidence to corroborate their initial convictions,” Raskin reflected.
“Those who were on the fence have been moved to reject the ‘Big Lie’ and to doubt the continuing efforts to undermine the reality of Biden’s victory. Those who were in Trump’s camp as true believers have begun to melt away at the margins even though many of them are still holding firm. It does not look like a promising scenario for those who continue to want Donald Trump to be the central figure of American politics,” he said.
A Morning Consult/Politico poll released this week found that the hearings may not have shaken loose many of Trump’s most fundamental supporters, but the share of unaffiliated or independent voters in the U.S. that believe the former president is responsible for the insurrection has increased significantly. And almost more importantly, those independents who held “favorable views” of Trump have continued to dip, too. Many independents are indicating they will vote for a Democrat in November.
If the Justice Department will not make it so that Trump is unable to hold office, at the least, this should be a small comfort: the hearings have manifested an even greater number of Americans who believe there is good reason to vote against a person, or persons, who would incite a deadly insurrection.
Raskin would like to see the Justice Department take action publicly and more definitively before the midterms. He also knows that the timing of that announcement could draw ire, and that screeches of political impropiety are likely to come.
“But the Constitution itself regards this matter with the utmost gravity,” Raskin said. “Section III of the 14th Amendment said that people who have sworn an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution and betray it by engaging in an insurrection shall never hold federal or state office again. That is a constitutional principle.”
He continued: “It’s obviously a legitimate thing for us to be talking about. But the Department of Justice and prosecutors at other levels have to make their decisions without regard to anyone’s political plans. If people had immunity from prosecution just because they were running for office, then anybody who was suspected of a crime, any crime at all, could simply announce for political office, and then they would have legal immunity. That can’t be right,” he said.”
The committee’s debut session was a year ago this month. Police who defended the Capitol testified for the first time publicly and put a personal face on the raw, frenzied violence that most Americans only witnessed from afar.
As the months have marched on, the committee has unearthed hundreds of thousands of pages of records from the White House and elsewhere and has interviewed over 1,000 people who were directly or indirectly involved with Jan. 6. Those interviews continue. Raskin said this week the number of former Trump aides who have come forward recently are producing a “waterfall of truth.”
Attempts to stop the committee from airing its evidence have been unceasing, yet mostly unsuccessful. Those caught in the committee’s scrutiny have been unable to cast the panel as illegitimate when fighting subpoenas in court.
The committee’s work has been overwhelmingly bolstered through judicial opinions, providing an outcome that offers benefits twice over. When Judge David Carter ruled that Trump and John Eastman, the attorney who developed a six-point strategy to overturn the election, had likely engaged in a criminal conspiracy—and further that they “engaged in a coup in search of legal theory”—it set a strong precedent for Congress and upped the ante for investigations at the Justice Department.
In fact, this week, Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Windom revealed in court that the Department obtained a new search warrant to access records on John Eastman’s phone. This process has been unfolding for the last month. The home of Jeffrey Clark was also searched. Clark is the former DOJ attorney who Trump tried to install as attorney general after existing senior officials at the department refused his scheme to declare the election as false. And Clark’s underling, Ken Klukowski, is now cooperating with the DOJ’s probe into Jan. 6 in full, according to Klukowski’s lawyer, Ed Greim.
Cassidy Hutchinson, who provided some of the most shocking public testimony this summer is cooperating with the department. During the hearings, she testified under oath that Trump knew the mob was armed—“I don’t fucking care that they have weapons, they’re not here to hurt me,’” she recalled him saying—and she disclosed that her boss, Trump’s Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, and Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani, sought pardons in the aftermath of the insurrection. She also disclosed information about a small battery of Republican lawmakers who sought pardons in the wake of Jan. 6.
She also divulged how the president wished to go to the Capitol on Jan. 6 after his speech, offering insight into his mindset that day. When this request was rejected, his outrage was so severe, Hutchinson said, that the former president lunged at the arm and neck of a Secret Service agent driving him.
Other witnesses have refused to cooperate under subpoena, courting contempt of Congress charges and indictments like Trump ally and strategist Steve Bannon and former White House trade adviser Peter Navarro. Bannon was found guilty on two counts and faces sentencing in October. Others, like Meadows or onetime adviser Dan Scavino, have cooperated to varying degrees and managed to evade prosecution. Other Trump-world officials have invoked their Fifth Amendment rights after being subpoenaed. Committee vice chair Liz Cheney said last month, more than 30 witnesses called before the committee invoked their right against self-incrimination.
The most high profile of those figures are Eastman; Clark; longtime GOP operative Roger Stone; conspiracy theory hack and right-wing podcaster Alex Jones; and Michael Flynn, Trump’s disgraced former national security adviser.
In December 2020, Flynn publicly advocated for Trump to invoke martial law to rerun the 2020 election. He was also part of discussions with Trump and his attorneys where there was talk of the military seizing voting machines. He did not ultimately cooperate with the select committee, but in airing a five-minute clip of Flynn’s deposition, the committee allowed his silence to speak volumes.
When Cheney asked Flynn if he felt the violence on Jan. 6 was legally justified, he pleaded the Fifth. When she asked if he believed it was morally justified, he pleaded the Fifth. When she asked him if he believed in the peaceful transition of power in the United States, the retired three-star Army general pleaded the Fifth.
A Capitol Police officer walks past a worker cleaning damage a day after a pro-Trump mob broke into the US Capitol.
With each day that has passed since the committee’s first-ever hearing last July, the truth continues to pour out.
”The defense of the constitutional order and the rule of law should be something that unifies Americans across the political spectrum,” Raskin said. “Trump convinced millions of people that if your team does it, if they break the law or upend the Constitutional order, you embrace it or defend it regardless of how unlawful or criminal it is.”
“But that’s just an appalling descent for intellectual and ethical standards in American life,” Raskin said.
“When the people [who believed the Big Lie] called for ‘Justice for Trump’ they said ‘let the people decide.’ The people voted for Biden. But Trump tried to overthrow the election, so he was impeached for doing that. And we took it to trial, and at trial, they told us then, ‘don’t deal with this through impeachment, you could prosecute him if there was a crime.’ “
“Now the Department of Justice is investigating whether there is a crime, and these same people are saying, ‘you can’t prosecute him, it’s too political!’ No matter what is done, they essentially assert that Donald Trump is beyond the reach of the law and that is a profoundly anti-democratic attitude,” he said.
One of the last battles to be waged between Trump and the truth about January 6 will very likely play out on the field of executive privilege disputes and crime-fraud exceptions where the Department of Justice, not the select committee, will lead the charge of a criminal investigation into the former president and his associates.
The Justice Department is moving at its own pace and operating mostly in stealth, but the dam seems to be breaking as more reporting now suggests the DOJ has its Jan. 6 prosecutors focused on two principal tracks: Trump’s possible orchestration of a seditious conspiracy and obstruction of a congressional proceeding and fraud.
The fraud track would stem from the fake-elector scheme and is believed to encompass the pressure campaign Trump and his allies put on officials at the DOJ to say the election was rigged and votes were fraudulently cast.
The committee’s investigation, meanwhile, is still humming as members maneuver their way through new challenges—like what to do about a batch of deleted Secret Service text messages from Jan. 5 and Jan. 6 as well as deleted texts from the same period at the Department of Homeland Security.
That department’s inspector general, Joseph Cuffari, the Washington Post was first to report on Friday, “scrapped” an effort to recover agency phones. In February, after learning that messages had been erased during a “planned” device reset, Cuffari reportedly decided to stop further review and collection of phones. He only this month notified the House and Senate Homeland Security committees of the “erased” texts. He was asked by the head of that committee, and various others 10 days after the insurrection to ensure all records and devices were preserved.
Committee chairman Bennie Thompson, as well as Rep. Carolyn Maloney, who sits on a committee that oversees offices of the inspectors general, have called on Cuffari to recuse himself from the investigation. The director of the Secret Service, James Murray, announced late Friday he would waylay his planned July 31 retirement to “ensure our agency's continued cooperation, responsiveness, and full support with respect to ongoing congressional and other inquiries.”
This is an unsettling series of developments, Raskin admits.
“This profound mystery of the Secret Service texts and what information is being masked by their disappearance is something we are all pursuing. We are invested in finding out the truth there,” he said.
The next hearing is expected in September and the committee plans to produce an interim report around the same time. A final report will follow, but meanwhile, over the next month, he said, “everyone has loose ends that they want to follow up on.”
During the course of its probe, every member of the committee has specialized in a different facet of the investigation.
Raskin’s focus was Trump’s mobilization of the mob as well as domestic violent extremist groups like the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers. and Three Percenters.
“There are still significant things that we are finding out that I want to pursue there,” Raskin said. “The same goes for the shakedown of the Justice Department, the attempt to coerce state election officials, and so forth. I would say each member has his or her continuing research agenda and then we have some things we consider major to the whole of the investigation we are pursuing.”
It has been a long year already and it is not quite yet over. As for the man at the center of the probe, former President Trump, he has yet to stop his incessant spread of disinformation about the 2020 election and is poised to take another run for the White House.
But Raskin is optimistic.
“I’m most optimistic about the fact that the vast majority of the American people do not believe in coups, insurrections, and political violence to usurp the will of the people. There is still a profound allegiance to constitutional democracy in the country,” he said.
He is not cynical, but “sobered” around other facts.
What “sobers him,” he said, is that Republican Party, even now “remains under the spell and stranglehold of Donald Trump.”
He continued: “They are using every anti-democratic device in the book to thwart majority rule; from voter suppression statutes to gerrymandering of our districts to the weaponization of the filibuster to the manipulation of the Electoral College.”
“We are in a race between the clear majority’s will and preference for democratic institutions and progress and the efforts to drag us back into some kind of anti-democratic past,” Raskin remarked.
So, then, are the people now armed with the tools of “intellectual defense” they need to resist this and other aspiring tyrants to come?
“I don't think people will fall for any more ‘Big Lies’ or disinformation for the most part,” he said.
The lawmaker reflected: “People who have been disabused of all these notions aren’t going back. But there is an important question being tested here: whether the new propaganda systems that have grown up in the internet age can actually operate like an intellectual straight-jacket? Will millions of people really be locked into a system of lies? That’s a question that is closely connected to the future of our democracy. Democracy needs a ground to stand on, and that foundation has got to be the truth.”
Cases containing electoral votes are opened during a joint session of Congress after the session resumed following protests at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, early on January 7, 2021.
In the wake of the insurrection, there was a reported flurry of conversation among members of former President Donald Trump’s Cabinet about whether he should be removed from office by way of the 25th Amendment. Now the Jan. 6 committee is conducting interviews with some of those officials as investigators pursue more information about what unfolded around Trump after the attack.
According to reporting first from ABC, the committee has now interviewed former Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and plans to interview former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo before the week is out.
Mick Mulvaney, who parlayed his job as Trump’s acting chief of staff to become the special envoy for Ireland, is also reportedly meeting with the panel on Thursday.
Exactly six days after the attack on the U.S. Capitol, the House of Representatives passed a resolution 223-205 urging then-Vice President Mike Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office.
At the time, Pence said he did not believe this course of action was “in the best interest of our nation or consistent with the Constitution,” and he dubbed the resolution a “political game.” He also issued his refusal to invoke the 25th Amendment before the House had even completed its vote.
That “game” Pence worried about, however, was reportedly one that some members of Trump’s inner circle had already considered playing.
In ABC reporter Jonathan Karl’s book, Betrayal, he described a conversation between then-Treasury Secretary Mnuchin and then-Secretary of State Pompeo. Pompeo, Karl reported, sought out “legal analysis” on how the 25th Amendment could be applied and how fast it might work.
Washington, D.C., was heavily reeling from the Capitol assault. Yet during an appearance on MSNBC last November, Karl said the 25th Amendment talks were quickly nipped in the bud once officials learned the process could be a lengthy one and potentially complicated by the fact that members of Trump’s Cabinet had resigned after Jan. 6, including Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.
It was reported Thursday that both DeVos and Chao are figures of interest to Jan. 6 investigators, too, and that they may also be asked to cooperate.
DeVos stepped down 24 hours after the attack and told USA Today this June that she was part of conversations where the possibility of invoking the 25th Amendment with other members of Trump’s Cabinet was discussed.
In a portion of his testimony to the Jan. 6 committee, former White House attorney Pat Cipollone told investigators that former Secretary of Labor Eugene Scalia wanted members of the Cabinet to meet 24 hours after the insurrection. Scalia said he asked for the meeting because he felt “trying to work within the administration to steady the ship” would be better than watching more resignations roll in.
Pompeo has historically denied that he was part of any conversation after Jan. 6 where invoking the 25th Amendment came up.
DeVos’ recent interview undercuts that claim.
“I spoke with the vice president and just let him know I was there to do whatever he wanted and needed me to do or help with, and he made it very clear that he was not going to go in that direction or that path,” DeVos said of Pence on June 9. “I spoke with colleagues. I wanted to get a better understanding of the law itself and see if it was applicable in this case. There were more than a few people who had those conversations internally.”
DeVos said when she realized invoking the 25th Amendment against Trump was not a viable path forward, she tendered her resignation. She has not outwardly blamed Trump for Jan. 6, but she told USA Today she “didn’t see the president step in and do what he could have done to turn it back or slow it down or really address the situation.”
Cassidy Hutchinson, the former aide to Trump’s Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, testified to the Jan. 6 committee that discussions of removing Trump with the 25th Amendment were flowing after the mob laid siege to the Capitol. Trump had spent three hours watching the mob attack without strongly condemning the violence or taking concerted action to stop it. When he finally delivered a speech in the Rose Garden that afternoon, and only after multiple people had died and much blood had been shed, he proclaimed “we love you” to his supporters before asking them to go home.
The next day, officials at the White House pushed to have Trump deliver a speech. Former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson told the committee under oath that the plan for the Jan. 7 speech mostly went into effect because people inside the White House were terrified of two things: the mounting criticism that Trump didn’t do enough and that the 25th Amendment would be invoked.
“The secondary reason to that [speech] was that, ‘think about what might happen in the final 15 days of your presidency if we don’t do this, there’s already talks about invoking the 25th Amendment, you need this as cover,’” Hutchinson said.
According to CNN, the committee is also seeking testimony from John Ratcliffe, a former Republican congressman from Texas who vehemently defended Trump during Trump’s first impeachment inquiry for obstruction of Congress and abuse of power as well as during special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian interference of the 2016 election.
Chad Wolf, once the acting secretary for the Department of Homeland Security, and his former deputy, Ken Cuccinelli, are in reported talks to meet with investigators, as well.
Both Wolf and Cuccinneli were asked to cooperate with the probe voluntarily last October.
Wolf was once much adored by Trump. He began to lead the Department of Homeland Security after then-Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen resigned in April 2019. Despite Nielsen’s overt willingness to enforce any number of Trump’s cruel immigration policies during her tenure, she wasn’t enough of a toady for the 45th president, and he slammed her in the press as an ineffectual before she resigned. When she finally stepped down, Kevin McAleenan, then the commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, filled her slot. McAleenan resigned in November 2019.
Those transitions were riddled with problems, however.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) would later reveal, after its own independent assessment of DHS, that both Nielsen and McAleenan altered or amended internal policies on lines of succession at the department. DHS pushed back on the report when it went public but Wolf ultimately stayed in place with Trump’s full support. Rep. Bennie Thompson, who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee as well as the Jan. 6 committee, said the succession rules were altered in haste so Trump’s “ideologues” could bypass typical Senate confirmation procedure.
Thompson had good reason to feel this way. In a February 2019 interview with CBS’ Face the Nation, Trump acknowledged that he enjoyed lording over acting officials versus those who had to go through more rigorous congressional approval.
Mulvaney, who meets with the committee Thursday, should cooperate without much trouble, if history is any indicator. Though he was a fierce defender of Trump’s during his tenure with the administration, after Jan. 6, Mulvaney became a more vocal critic.
“You don't get to where you got to yesterday with something that's normal. That's not normal for any citizen, let alone a president of the United States,” Mulvaney said on Jan. 7 when facing questions about whether Trump should be removed through the 25th Amendment.
Since then, Mulvaney has thrown his support behind those Trump officials who have come forward to testify, including Hutchinson.
The Jan. 6 committee is expected to continue its probe in the weeks ahead, and chairman Thompson has said that additional hearings will be held in September.
Fresh off a subpoena requesting his cooperation, former Trump White House counsel Pat Cipollone is slated to testify before the Jan. 6 committee for a private, transcribed, and videotaped interview.
A committee aide did not immediately respond to a Daily Kos request for comment.The New York Times was the first to report the development Wednesday, citing a person briefed on the matter.
Cipollone’s full compliance could be illuminating for the investigation into former President Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election. According to sworn testimony already delivered by former members of the Department of Justice under Trump, as well as Trump White House officials, Cipollone was often a firsthand witness to make-or-break moments in Trump’s attempted coup.
Cipollone was privy to multiple conversations about the bunk elector scheme championed by Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani, witnesses have said, and Cipollone was also present when Trump raised the question of seizing voting machines.
The former president’s counsel attended a meeting recently detailed at length—and under oath—by the nation’s former acting attorney general, Jeffrey Rosen, and Rosen’s deputy, Richard Donoghue.
Rosen and Donoghue testified that it was Cipollone who stood tall against Trump in the Oval Office during a meeting where Trump nearly fired Rosen and replaced him with yes-man Jeffrey Clark, a mid-level environmental lawyer at the Department of Justice who strongly supported Trump’s baseless election fraud claims.
Like Cipollone, Clark was subpoenaed by the committee. But Clark refused to answer any questions and instead pleaded the Fifth Amendment repeatedly during a private meeting with committee counsel.
When Rosen and Donoghue testified, they described how the draft letter written by Clark rattled off a long series of bogus claims about election fraud in Georgia and urged that “alternate” electors be seated.
Rosen’s predecessor, Attorney General Bill Barr, had already declared publicly and in private meetings with Trump, that there was no evidence of fraud widespread enough that it would alter the outcome of the election. But Clark, Rosen and Donoghue said, pushed ahead anyway.
When Cipollone saw the draft letter, Donoghue told the committee he remembered the counsel’s reaction vividly.
If the DOJ cosigned it, Cipollone allegedly said, it would be a “murder-suicide pact.”
The draft letter never went out because Donoghue, Rosen, and others at the Department of Justice threatened to resign en masse if Trump insisted on replacing Rosen with Clark.
According to sworn testimony already provided by former Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, Cipollone was also part of key conversations with Mark Meadows, then Trump’s chief of staff.
Hutchinson said Cipollone pleaded with Meadows to act as the mob grew larger, gallows were erected on the Capitol lawn and chants of ‘Hang Mike Pence’ reverberated on Capitol grounds.
Hutchinson recalled Cipollone telling Meadows how desperate the situation had become on Jan. 6 and urged Meadows to understand that the mob was quite literally calling to kill then-Vice President Mike Pence.
“You heard him, Pat,” Hutchinson recalled Meadows saying. “He thinks Mike deserves it. He doesn’t think they’re doing anything wrong.”
According to Hutchinson's recounting of the day, Cipollone was flabbergasted.
“This is f-ing crazy. We need to be doing something more,” Cipollone allegedly said.
Cipollone has been a stalwart ally to Trump, representing the 45th president for both of his impeachments and in various other legal matters. When Trump was impeached for obstruction of Congress and abuse of power in 2019, Cipollone offered a vehement and sharp defense of Trump, taking up the “witch hunt” mantle at length and slamming the inquiry as meritless and part of a campaign by Democrats and those on the left to punish Trump for political differences.
When Trump was impeached the first time, Cipollone notably called for cameras to be barred from proceedings, arguing it would create a circus-like atmosphere. The cameras would stay.
Trump was ultimately quite pleased with Cipollone’s performance during the first impeachment, calling him a “Great White House counsel.”
This latest decision to comply with the Jan. 6 committee’s subpoena will put Trump’s relationship with Cipollone to the test and the extent of Cipollone’s cooperation will naturally hinge on what he actually discloses.
When Trump attorney John Eastman tried to fend off the committee’s subpoena for his records, Eastman cited attorney-client privilege but was unable to overcome the crime-fraud exception to this assertion. The crime-fraud exception essentially says that confidentiality is not blanketed and if a client sought advice from an attorney that would help that client pull off or commission a crime, then work product or correspondence can be disclosed.
A Washington Post profile of Cipollone from Jan. 2020 notes the counsel’s propensity to keep himself out of the national spotlight.
His profile was so low in Washington, D.C., in fact, that when Cipollone first took to the Senate floor during Trump’s impeachment, it was his first time ever appearing on C-SPAN.
Memorably, even while presiding over the inquiry, Chief Justice John Roberts introduced Cipollone and mispronounced his last name.
TODAY: Cipollone's first time on C-SPAN. Sekulow's 44th time on C-SPAN (first in 1990 ... 1991 below) pic.twitter.com/XbWVBCJ5ek
Jay Sekulow, one of Trump’s personal attorneys, told Yahoo! News in January 2020 that Cipollone was a “serious tactician” and described him as an “aggressive advocate” for the 45th president though “measured.”
In that same 2020 article, an unnamed Trump White House official said Trump saw Cipollone as “beyond loyal.”
Cipollone will appear before the committee for his private session this Friday.
The committee’s next public hearing is July 12 at 10 AM ET and there will be at least one more hearing to follow. The committee is expected to focus on the extremist elements involved in the insurrection as well as unpack exactly what was going on during the 187 minutes of silence from the White House as the Capitol was under attack.
Pat Cipollone had what one former member of the Justice Department described last week to the Jan. 6 committee as “an impossible job” serving the 45th president of the United States, Donald J. Trump.
But Cipollone was “consistent” and “did that job well,” Richard Donoghue, once the second-in-command to former acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, testified.
Cipollone “always sided with the department” and did so even as Trump pushed to overturn the results of the 2020 election by attempting to install crony Jeffrey Clark into the attorney general role.
This was a necessary step in a greater plan to have Clark send a letter to swing states falsely informing them their election results were fraudulent and directing them to appoint Trump’s fake electors.
Cipollone, however, appeared to know a bad deal when he saw it three days before the insurrection during a meeting at the White House with Rosen, Donoghue, Office of Legal Counsel head Richard Engel, Clark, and Trump.
Cipollone rejected Clark’s letter and the plan underpinning it as a “murder-suicide pact,” Donoghue told the committee publicly last week.
When the mob finally ensued on Jan. 6, according to testimony from Cassidy Hutchinson, the one-time aide to Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, it was Cipollone who pleaded with a despondent Meadows as a gallows was being erected on the Capitol lawn.
“They are literally calling for the vice president to be f-ing hung,” Hutchinson recalled Cipollone telling the president’s chief of staff.
Meadows replied, saying of then-Vice President Mike Pence, “You heard him, Pat. He thinks Mike deserves it. He doesn’t think they’re doing anything wrong.”
Cipollone, Hutchinson said under oath, was, in this terrifying moment, at a loss.
“This is f-ing crazy, we need to be doing something more,” Hutchinson recalled Cipollone saying.
Now, the Jan. 6 committee wants Cipollone to do something more, and it has issued a subpoena for his deposition by July 6.
Cipollone’s testimony would be significant for the investigation into the Capitol attack and Trump’s bid to overturn the election results. It would perhaps be some of the most significant testimony to emerge because it would likely expose the former president’s overt role in the insurrection even more directly.
He sat previously for the committee in April, but he was not under oath and the meeting was not transcribed. He appeared with Patrick Philbin, another Trump White House attorney who once joined him to defend Trump against impeachment.
The subpoena now forces Cipollone to decide what he will say under oath and what he will leave under possible attorney-client privilege or executive privilege with the former president.
Cipollone, according to Hutchinson, was one of the few voices of reason surrounding Trump on Jan. 6, even explicitly warning him and others in the president’s orbit that if he went to the Capitol after his speech at the Ellipse, “we’re going to get charged with every crime imaginable.”
He was at meetings where the question of seizing voting machines was raised, and he was there when not just Donoghue, Engel, and Rosen’s resignations were threatened if Trump insisted on installing Clark, but when Bill Barr, Rosen’s predecessor, offered to quit because he would not declare there was election fraud where none existed.
Cipollone threatened to resign in the runup to Jan. 6 often, according to Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and adviser.
Kushner testified before the probe in recorded deposition and told committee Vice Chair Liz Cheney he chalked up Cipollone’s threats to resign as mere “whining.”
Cheney has publicly called on Cipollone to testify before the committee multiple times and has framed the request in a way that would possibly curry public trust around him.
“Our evidence shows that Mr. Cipollone and his office tried to do what was right,” Cheney remarked during a recent hearing.
But according to the letter notifying him of the subpoena, Cipollone has declined to cooperate since April. And this subpoena is among the last-resort options barring something more extreme down the road, like holding him in contempt.
If he were to sit now, it would be under closely negotiated terms with counsel present.
In a statement Wednesday, Thompson and Cheney noted, however: ”Any concerns Mr. Cipollone has about the institutional prerogatives of the office he previously held are clearly outweighed by the need for his testimony."
The Jan. 6 committee is reportedly preparing to call Supreme Court spouse Ginni Thomas to talk about just how deeply involved she was in the effort to help Donald Trump have a coup. Thomas told the Daily Caller, “I look forward to talking to them,” and that she wants to “clear up misconceptions.” Okay then.
The committee now says she’s going to get that opportunity. That’s one step closer to Congress taking seriously the threat that Thomas and her spouse, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, pose to the republic.
A report in The New York Times Thursday combined with The Washington Poststory put Ginni Thomas in the thick of John Eastman’s coup-plotting. There are emails between the two. There’s Eastman telling a pro-Trump lawyer and Trump campaign officials that he was aware of a “heated fight” within the Supreme Court: “For those willing to do their duty, we should help them by giving them a Wisconsin cert petition to add into the mix.”
Now, that could be Eastman lying about the situation in order to keep the team fighting for Trump or from some other reason—that’s law professor Steve Vladek’s interpretation. Or it could have been Ginni working Eastman up with tales from the inside to keep him happy.
Regardless, it is the spouse of a sitting Supreme Court justice in the thick of a coup attempt. We don’t know where Clarence Thomas is in all this. We do know that he was the lone justice who wanted to keep the White House records around Jan. 6 away from the committee. Maybe now we have new information as to why he wanted that.
What we also know now, thanks to Thursday’s Jan. 6 committee hearing, is that Eastman (who was a Thomas clerk back in the day) knew that what he was promoting was illegal and told Trump so on Jan. 4, two days before the insurrection.
Eastman knew what he was pushing—with help from Ginni Thomas—was illegal. Following that to its logical conclusion, with the revelations of the last 24 hours, how does the committee not subpoena Ginni Thomas?
Furthermore, how do President Joe Biden, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer not demand that Clarence Thomas resign? How do the House and Senate Judiciary Committees not turn their attention to Clarence Thomas and investigating just what Clarence and Ginni Thomas were cooking up together?
Here’s what retired federal judge J. Michael Luttig, a true conservative hero who was on George W. Bush’s short list for the Supreme Court, said: ”Donald Trump and his allies and supporters are a clear and present danger to American democracy. [...] I don’t speak those words lightly.”
Those allies and supporters include Supreme Court Clarence Thomas. The danger is coming from the highest court in the land and Congress has to deal with that. It’s time to begin the investigations leading to an impeachment of Clarence Thomas. No, this Senate would not convict with 50 Republicans, but after the work of the Jan. 6 committee and all of these revelations, they need to be forced to vote to protect him. They need to be making the case against Clarence Thomas, and then they need to start real work of reforming and expanding the Supreme Court.
Republican Rep. Tom Rice of South Carolina was one of the architects of the enormous tax breaks for the rich that the Republican Party passed during the Trump administration. While it was wildly unpopular and led almost entirely to further extremes in wealth inequality in our country, it may be considered the only piece of Republican legislation to actually be passed during all of the years the GOP enjoyed majority control under Trump. This, of course, is not good enough for the more fascist wing of the Republican Party, and after Donald Trump’s attempts to orchestrate a coup d’etat fell through, Rep. Rice found himself among the 10 Republican representatives who voted for his impeachment.
To be crystal-clear here: Rep. Rice is the only one of the 10 Republicans to vote for impeachment that also voted against certifying the results of 2020 election. He subsequently told reporters, months later, that while he still has reservations about the results of the presidential election, he regrets his anti-certification vote, and felt it was clear that “President Trump was responsible for the attack on the U.S. Capitol.” This means that in 2022, Rice is persona non grata among wannabe fascist henchmen like craven Republican Rep. Kevin McCarthy and others.
Rice is facing a backlash and a Donald Trump rally-machine that has continued to call him a Benedict Arnold to the MAGA-Nazi movement. Trump has endorsed GOP primary candidates against Rice and has traded public jabs with him, with Trump calling Rice a “disaster” while Rice called Trump a “would-be tyrant.”
Depending on whose polling you go by, the primary race for Rice’s 7th Congressional District is going great for him … or his opponent. So Rice, like Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, has decided to lean into bashing Trump while attempting to remind the GOP’s base that Donald Trump is just the bluntest version of what Rice and the rest of the Republican Party have always been.
On Sunday, Rep. Rice did an interview with ABC News’ Chief Washington Correspondent Jonathan Karl to help promote himself, as well as further explain why Donald Trump is sort of a terrible person. The interview was a pretty softball one (you can watch below) where Karl attempts to paint Rice as some kind of maverick. It’s a bit embarrassing, honestly. That being said, Rice does a solid job of pointing out that Donald Trump did to try and orchestrate the overthrow of the government, and that when the Capitol building was being invaded by his followers and conspirators, Trump didn’t do a single thing to protect the legislative branch of the U.S. government. In fact, he didn’t even do anything to protect his own vice president.
“When he watched the Capitol, the ‘People's House,’ being sacked, when he watched the Capitol Police officers being beaten for three or four hours and lifted not one thing or to stop it -- I was livid then and I’m livid today about it,” Rice recalled. “And it was very clear to me I took an oath to protect the Constitution.”
Rice also points out that while Donald Trump has publicly called him a “disaster” who lacks the respect of his fellow GOP operatives, he was a good little foot soldier to the Donald, until he wasn’t: “If I am a ‘disaster,’ and a ‘total fool’ and I voted with him 169 times out of 184, what does that make him? I was following his lead.”
Here is where we see the limitations of the modern Republican Party, and more specifically, the neocon wing of the Party that is hoping to retain control while waiting for Trump to pass. Rice told ABC News that he hopes Trump does not run for office again. But his hope has nothing to do with what’s good for the country. It’s not simply because Trump is, in Rice’s words “ a narcissist, and he’s driven by attention, and he’s driven by revenge.” It isn’t because Trump should be in jail or on trial for treason, but because “We’ll [the GOP] get painted more in the corner of extremism, they'll try to label us as extremist. And he’ll feed that.”
Asked about whether or not he would support a Kevin McCarthy speakership if the GOP took majority control of the House in November, Rice was equally mushy-mouthed, saying, “We’ll see what happens.”
The Jan. 6 committee launches its public hearings tonight. For the first hearing—a total of six are currently slated—the panel is expected to present its findings to the American public about former President Donald Trump’s role in a scheme to overturn the 2020 election and more specifically, how extremist elements were involved in efforts to stop the peaceful transfer of power.
For in-depth information about the committee’s investigation so far, check out the related story links below. There’s a BIG Guide to help you stay on top of who’s who plus Daily Kos interviews with one of the committee’s first witnesses as well as members of law enforcement who fought off the mob on Jan. 6.
The next hearing is scheduled for June 13 at 10 PM ET. Additional hearings are expected on June 15 at 10 PM ET. and June 16 at 1 PM ET. A time for the June 21 hearing has not yet been confirmed. A final presentation is anticipated on June 23 and that hearing will be in primetime, like tonight, at 8 PM.
Witnesses on Thursday night are filmmaker Nick Quested, who embedded with the Proud Boys in the lead-up to Jan. 6, and U.S. Capitol Police officer Caroline Edwards, who suffered a traumatic brain injury after being assaulted by members of the mob.
New video footage from Jan. 6 is expected to be released during tonight’s hearing, putting the extremist elements that were at play that day in sharp relief. Heavy attention will likely be paid to the speech that Trump delivered from the Ellipse as well. It was those remarks that earned him his second impeachment for incitement of insurrection.
Next week, witnesses reportedly in the mix include Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who once fielded a call from Trump to “find” 11,000 votes so he could beat now-President Joe Biden’s victory in that state. Members of former Vice President Mike Pence’s office, including onetime chief of staff Marc Short and former chief counsel Greg Jacob, have been invited to testify. Other witnesses reportedly invited include officials who worked at the Department of Justice under Trump, including Jeffrey Rosen and Richard Donoghue. More details to come on that in the days ahead.
As we get into the second half of tonight’s hearing, we have heard opening remarks from USCP Officer Caroline Edwards, the daughter of a U.S. Marine who fought in the Korean War.
Nick Quested, the British filmmaker also discloses in opening remarks that he is appearing under subpoena.
We are hearing as well from investigative counsel for the Jan. 6 Committee and they have outlined how the breaches unfolded, how Tarrio and Rhodes met in a parking garage one day before the attack. How Tarrio said that he and Rhodes shared the same objective.
Quested’s crew filmed them on the evening of Jan. 5 and Jan. 6.
Officer Caroline Edwards begins. "I was called a lot of things on Jan. 6, I was called Nancy's Pelosi's dog, called incompetent, a hero and a villain" She says, in actuality, she was none of those things. "I was an American."
During the Quested testimony, we hear a description of what Quested watched as the first barrier was breached.
He estimates there were about 200-250 Proud Boys that marched on the Capitol.
Thompson says they walked around the Capitol that morning and “this allowed them to see what defenses were in place,” Thompson says.
Quested is describing how he met up with Proud Boys around 10:30 am as they walked toward the Capitol. There was a large contingent, more than he expected, Quested says. He was confused why they were walking away from POTUS speech.
Here’s a clip of the committee’s investigative counsel explaining the evidence it has amassed against members of extremist groups who attacked the Capitol.
USCP Officer Caroline Edwards is methodically explaining how she was assaulted and quite literally, got right back up and started the defending the line.
Important to note: she discusses how she watched Proud Boy Joseph Biggs approach, she watched as he conferred with others including Jan. 6 defendant Ryan Samsel. Moments later, they approached and quickly, they attacked. She was knocked to the ground, hit her chin and the back of her head on the concrete.
Sitting behind USCP Officer Caroline Edwards tonight are USCP Officer Harry Dunn and Sgt. Aquilino Gonell.
Chairman Thompson asked Officer Edwards to recount one memory that stands out the most in her mind.
“The time when I talked about falling behind MPD's line, I remember because I had been kind of shielded away, she says. She only had a partial view. When she fell behind the line, she can remember her breath catching in her throat. It was like something she had “seen at the movies.”
“I couldn't believe my eyes. There were officers on the ground. They were bleeding,” she says.
It was a scenario she had no training for, that was far beyond the scope.
Thompson apologized to Edwards, saying they never thought she would have to defend the Capitol against her fellow Americans.
The committee is also sharing video clips of deposition provided to the panel by a series of Trump’s supporters who showed up at the Capitol on Jan. 6, prepared to storm the building or do whatever he asked.
We’re going to examine the lies that convinced those men and others to storm the Capitol and try to stop the transfer of power.
We're going to take a close look at Trump’s first attack on the rule of law. When he lit the fuse to the violence of January 6.
Coming up tomorrow, I’ll have a full breakdown for you on what happened tonight, why that context matters, and importantly, what’s to come next week when we start getting into the nitty-gritty of the committee’s findings.
Towards the end of the hearing Thursday night, investigators offered this clip of insurrectionists testifying about how they came to the Capitol on Jan. 6 because former President Donald Trump asked them to do so.
The Jan. 6 committee launches its public hearings tonight. For the first hearing—a total of six are currently slated—the panel is expected to present its findings to the American public about former President Donald Trump’s role in a scheme to overturn the 2020 election and more specifically, how extremist elements were involved in efforts to stop the peaceful transfer of power.
Daily Kos will post live updates from tonight’s hearing starting at 8 PM ET.
For in-depth information about the committee’s investigation so far, check out the related story links below. There’s a BIG Guide to help you stay on top of who’s who plus Daily Kos interviews with one of the committee’s first witnesses as well as members of law enforcement who fought off the mob on Jan. 6.
The next hearing is scheduled for June 13 at 10 PM ET. Additional hearings are expected on June 15 at 10 PM ET. and June 16 at 1 PM ET. A time for the June 21 hearing has not yet been confirmed. A final presentation is anticipated on June 23 and that hearing will be in primetime, like tonight, at 8 PM.
Witnesses on Thursday night are filmmaker Nick Quested, who embedded with the Proud Boys in the lead-up to Jan. 6, and U.S. Capitol Police officer Caroline Edwards, who suffered a traumatic brain injury after being assaulted by members of the mob.
New video footage from Jan. 6 is expected to be released during tonight’s hearing, putting the extremist elements that were at play that day in sharp relief. Heavy attention will likely be paid to the speech that Trump delivered from the Ellipse as well. It was those remarks that earned him his second impeachment for incitement of insurrection.
Next week, witnesses reportedly in the mix include Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who once fielded a call from Trump to “find” 11,000 votes so he could beat now-President Joe Biden’s victory in that state. Members of former Vice President Mike Pence’s office, including onetime chief of staff Marc Short and former chief counsel Greg Jacob, have been invited to testify. Other witnesses reportedly invited include officials who worked at the Department of Justice under Trump, including Jeffrey Rosen and Richard Donoghue. More details to come on that in the days ahead.
The hearing will get underway tonight at 8:02:30 PM ET, if you take CSPAN’s word for it—and since they are the only cameras in the room tonight, we will. Live updates to post soon.
Chairman Bennie Thompson begins tonights hearing by thanking everyone for their attention.
“I’m Bennie Thompson, chairman of the Jan. 6 Committee, I was born raised and still lived in Bolton, Mississippi,” he says, explaining his background, a part of the country where people justify the actions of slavery, the KKK and lynching.
“I'm reminded of that dark history as I hear voices today try to justify the actions of the insurrectionists on Jan. 6, 2021,” Thompson says.
In his opening remarks this evening, Chairman Thompson outlines how in 1862, after citizens took up arms against the country, Congress adopted a new oath that no person who supported a rebellion could hold an office of public trust. Members swear an oath to protect the Constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic.
He praises the officers who defended the Capitol on Jan. 6.
They did this to defend “your vote,” Thompson said, to protect the peaceful transfer of power.
Chairman Thompson says the truth must be confronted with resolve and determination and delivers a barn-burner of a speech. He has made it plain what the committee believes it has uncovered: overwhelming evidence that the 45th president attempted to overthrow the election. We move now to remarks from Rep. Liz Cheney, the vice chair of the committee. She is just one of two Republicans, including Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger.
In her opening remarks, vicechair Liz Cheney says that the public will hear extensive evidence tonight and in the coming weeks about the overarching conspiracy by Trump to overturn the 2020 election
Cheney: "Jan. 6 was not a spontaneous incident." Intelligence has revealed that this was a well-orchestrated plan. The committee will identify elements of those plans and will show how Proud Boys led a mob into the Capitol on Jan. 6”
She continued: “On the morning of Jan. 6, President Donald Trump's intention was to remain POTUS despite the lawful outcome of the 2020 election and in violation of his constitutional obligation to relinquish power.”
Over multiple months, Donald Trump oversaw and coordinated a sophisticated 7-part plan to overturn the election and prevent a presidential transfer of power.
In the 2nd hearing, evidence will be shown demonstrating how Trump knew he lost the election but he perpetrated fraud, they argue, by promoting the lie that he won.
Recorded deposition from Attorney General Bill Barr:
WATCH: Attorney General Barr declares that Donald Trump lost the Presidential election in 2020. There is no doubt that the American people voted Trump out of office and the Select Committee has found no evidence of election fraud. pic.twitter.com/qa5qNyMXqS
— January 6th Committee (@January6thCmte) June 10, 2022
In a recorded deposition of Ivanka Trump before the Jan. 6 Cmte where she faced questions about AG’s Barr's conclusion of no widespread fraud, she says Barr's determination "affected her perspective.
"I accepted what he was saying," Ivanka Trump said.
In an excerpt of his opening statement for tonight's @January6thCmte hearings, chair Bennie Thompson says what happened cannot be swept under the rug and that he appears tonight as an American first and one who swore to protect the Constitution. pic.twitter.com/pGX4BxScg1
