The January 6 Hearings Are More Enlightening Than I Thought They’d Be

I've been following the story from the beginning.

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ISSUE #26

June 21, 2022

Let’s get to it.

Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

What’s remarkable about the January 6 hearings is how methodically and clearly the bipartisan committee lays out Trump's plan to steal the 2020 election from Joe Biden and overthrow the government.

Also remarkable is that even though there are two Republicans on the committee, Liz Cheney (R-WY) and Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), there has been no shouting at witnesses, cutting them off, political grandstanding, or gaslighting. But only during the hearing. If you want gaslighting, head to Fox News, or call your pro-Trump uncle living in a red state.

The Fox News Channel didn't air the first hearing or have commercial breaks during their programming for fear their viewers would switch the channel and get sucked into the truth of what happened on January 6 and its lead-up.

Liz Cheney (R-WY), vice-chair of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol, closed the first hearing with this line that will go down in history as one of the most poignant,

Tonight, I say this to my Republican colleagues who are defending the indefensible: There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain.

The case against Donald Trump and what happened on January 6 is simple, with an enormous amount of digital evidence to support it. The committee is clearly and concisely placing former president Donald Trump at the center of an attempt to overturn our democracy.

Let me lay out the case in layman's terms without much constitutional jargon. I don't want to put you to sleep.

In the lead-up to the 2020 election, Trump knew there was a good chance he would lose to Biden. There are plenty of clips of Trump telling the public it was going to be a “rigged election,” but *only* if Trump lost.

This makes no sense, but his supporters follow this logic.

When asked by reporters to confirm a peaceful transfer of power like every president before him if he lost, he obfuscated; it was always an “I'll wait and see what happens” answer.

Hillary Clinton, who won the popular vote by a whopping 3M votes in 2016 and is one of the most politically savvy politicians, warned Americans that Trump was incapable of conceding and a peaceful transfer of power was not likely. Which turned out not to be hyperbole but right on the money.

Trump also made claims of a rigged election during his September 29 debate with Biden. Nothing in this clip Trump claims is accurate or true. His language during that debate was priming his supporters for not believing the results. Trump was on the defensive the whole debate. He could smell defeat.

Trump lost the election to Biden by 7M votes.

Late on election night, Trump's campaign manager, Bill Stepien, told him it wasn't looking good and not to claim victory, saying it was far too early to call the election. Trump ignored this and instead listened to “an apparently inebriated Rudy Giuliani,” who told him to declare victory.

Trump did. Claiming he had won and election officials needed to stop counting the remaining ballots, which he said were fraudulent.

"We want all voting to stop," Trump told the American people. "We don't want them to find any ballots at 4:00 in the morning and add them to the list." Some states were still counting, and others hadn't even started counting mail-in ballots. Mail-in ballots are predominantly Democrat voters.

Stepien testified that Trump had no evidence to make that claim.

His closest advisors and lawyers told him he lost the election.

His daughter Ivanka testified that Trump had been told repeatedly that he had lost.

Attorney General William Bar told Trump he lost fair and square. And that there is no evidence of voter fraud. He called the argument Trump was peddling "bullsh*t." Whether Trump believed his advisors or not is for his therapist to deal with. Trump was told by his own people he lost the election and chose not to hear it.

Trump could not accept he had lost. So he didn't accept it at the expense of democracy.

---

Just days after the election, Trump's team began mulling over whether key state legislatures controlled by the GOP could appoint Trump electors even if the certified results showed Biden won.

Trump looked for every possible way to stay in power. He tried every avenue. When not one route proved fruitful - not lawsuits he brought to force recounts, not the bogus recount by QAnon supporters ginned up in Arizona - Trump started working with John Eastman in December 2020. Eastman filed a brief asking the Supreme Court to let Trump intervene in a longshot lawsuit to toss out election results in four swing states won by Joe Biden, which ultimately failed.

Even with more than 60 failed lawsuits over the election, Trump continued to lie that he had been cheated of victory.

More desperate, Trump invited rioters to the Capitol in a tweet on December 19, 2020. This was the match that lit the flame.

On December 19, 2020, Trump met with lawyers Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani, former national security advisor Michael Flynn, and others at the White House. Shortly after the meeting, Trump tweeted that it was “[s]tatistically impossible to have lost the 2020 election. Big protest in D.C. on January 6. Be there, will be wild!”

He knew what he was saying was not true and said it anyway, inviting a violent mob to the Capitol.

On December 20, members of the extremist organizations the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers began to organize to go to Washington. Both groups testified they went to Washington because Trump personally asked them to.

The Oath Keepers were in Washington to stop the count and were expecting Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act, enabling them to fight for him to remain president.

A vacuum was created in the Trump Administration when Trump's loyalists, advisors, and family members started distancing themselves from Trump, not wanting to participate in anything criminal. This left room for the real crazies, Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, and John Eastman (all as nutty as Trump, but with law degrees), to enable the Big Lie claims and more illegal activity on the part of the president.

After his inner circle broke away, Trump, exceedingly desperate to cling to power any way he could, found the one person willing to bend the rule of law until it broke. John Eastman. Judge Carter aptly described what Trump and Eastman were planning as "a coup in search of a legal strategy."

Eastman came up with a cockamamie idea that Vice President Pence could, on January 6, not just open the votes in the ceremony to certify the election for Joe Biden – the rightful winner of the 2020 election – but to open the votes and then send the slates back to the states, to have new electors or “alternate electors” (not real ones mind you, but fake ones) falsely deeming Trump—not Biden—to be the winner of their states: In a set of December 2020 emails to one Pennsylvania GOP lawmaker, Eastman suggested legislators could "assert the right to appoint an alternate slate of electors” or subtract mail-in ballots from Trump and Biden's totals at a “prorated amount.”

Negating the actual will of the people who overwhelmingly chose Biden for President.

If this all sounds very unamerican, it is. This is the stuff that happens in Russia and why Putin has been President for 22 years. Voting is just for show in Russia; Putin remains in power whether the Russian people vote for him or not. That is precisely what Trump and Eastman were attempting. To negate the will of the people who voted for Joe Biden.

Trump and Eastman were repeatedly told that their plan was unconstitutional and would result in violence in the streets if they followed through with their illegal plan. It would end American democracy as we know it.

Even if they could pressure Pence into sending the slates back to the states, throwing out the votes of all Americans, it would cause a “revolution” in the streets “within a constitutional crisis,” as the thoughtful and measured Judge J. Michael Luttig described in testimony during last week's hearing.

Luttig reiterated to NPR's All Things Considered,

“[T]he former president and his party are today a clear and present danger for American democracy.”

On January 5, then–vice president Pence's attorney Greg Jacob wrote a three-page memo concluding that what the President and his supporters were demanding Pence do the next day would break the 1887 Electoral College Act—that is, the law—in four different ways. The memo responded to John Eastman's memo laying out the plan for Pence to hand the election to Trump by refusing to count a number of Biden electors.

As each new illegal avenue to stay in power didn’t work for Trump, violence in the streets became Trump's only option. The Proud Boys stood back and stood by as Trump asked them to during his September 29th debate with Biden.

Trump then gave an impassioned speech at the Elipse, inciting his supporters to walk to the Capitol and take our country back by any means possible. Here are some of the things he said in his hour-plus speech on January 6.

“We will stop the steal.”

“We will never give up. We will never concede. It doesn't happen.”

“If you don't fight like hell you're not going to have a country anymore.”

Eastman spoke at a Trump rally near the White House just hours before the January 6 riot, telling a crowd of Trump supporters, “we know there was fraud,” and election officials had “ignored or violated state law” while he stood alongside Rudy Giuliani.

Trump began his pressure campaign on Pence weeks before the certification. Pence consulted with his team, lawyers, Judge Luttig, and Dan Quail. They all told him it wasn't his place to decide the 2020 election. One man doesn't determine American elections, especially if said man fixing the outcome would benefit from that decision. That's Russian sh*t.

Pence wasn't going to do what Eastman and Trump were pressuring him to do.

When Trump realized Pence would not send votes back to the states, that he instead would certify the election results for Biden, Trump tweeted this little nugget on January 6 after he knew there was violence at the Capitol and the doors to the Capitol had been breached and his VP was still in his ceremonial office,

Mike Pence didn't have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!

The rioters who had already breached the Capitol and were breaking windows and doors started looking for Pence to kill him. The above tweet was like throwing gasoline on a fire, accelerating the violence.

“Hang Mike Pence” was chanted inside and outside of the Capitol.

When Trump learned that the rioters were chanting “Hang Mike Pence,” the President said: “Maybe our supporters have the right idea.” He said that Pence “deserves it.”

A court filing by the Department of Justice reveals that a confidential informant of the Proud Boys told the FBI the Proud Boys would have killed Mike Pence if given a chance.

While rioters seized the Capitol and looked for congressmen and women to capture and kill, Trump did nothing. The insurrectionists used violence as a means to an end, on behalf of Trump, to get Mike Pence to overturn the result of the 2020 election.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) was one of the many people who contacted Trump to beg him to call off the mob. Trump refused. He did nothing. He didn't call for the military or the National Guard to assist outnumbered Capitol Police officers. At least nine people died that day and immediately after the attack.

Mike Pence looking at a Trump tweet on January 6, 2021. (Via January 6 Committee)

While Pence was evacuating through tunnels under the Capitol, insurrectionists came within 40 feet of the Vice President. Once Pence was secure in a garage below the Capitol with his wife and daughter and his secret service team, it was suggested he get in an SUV to be evacuated. He wouldn't.

He implied to his closest Secret Service agent that he trusted him, but not the Secret Service agent charged with driving the vehicle.

Why did Pence say this? What was the rationale for not leaving a dangerous place where insurrectionists wanted to hang him? We don't know for sure because Pence won't testify (he should. We need to hear in his own words what happened that day, for the historical record at the very least).

I think he said it because Pence couldn't be sure where he would be taken and *IF* he would return to the Capitol to certify the 2020 election results that would complete the transition of power to Joe Biden.

Pence knew Trump's goal: stop the transfer of power.

Trump didn't want the election certified. If Trump could succeed in postponing the certification for one day, it would give Trump more leverage to not certify the election at all. Just get to January 7 without certification. Which would be easier if Pence weren't at the Capitol to certify it.

Pence knew if Trump could stop the process even for one day, it would allow the Proud Boys, The Oath Keepers, and other white supremacist groups – who were armed – to fight in the streets when people came out to protest the certification not taking place so that then Trump could invoke the Insurrection Act. Leading to even more death and chaos in the streets.

The absence of a transition of power from Trump to Biden would allow the military branch of government to remain under Trump's command. There certainly would have been a revolution in the streets.

And I'm betting Democrats lose a street fight. Especially if the man in charge is on the side of the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers and has command of the military to throw all of us snowflakes in jail.

We are the peaceful, intelligent party, after all. We'll fight, but we typically don't have combat gear and weapons in our closets.

Had it not been for Pence standing up to Trump for the first time during their five years together, it would have been so. Pence turned out to be the one man who said no at the right time.

That our democracy is so fragile is eye-opening to everyone watching the hearings where history is being made before us. It is our Watergate, but even more horrifying. Trump has even fewer moral standards than Nixon and a much bigger ego. A man without shame. Not only did Trump not step down after he lost, Nixon resigned after he was impeached, but he’s still peddling the Big Lie today.

In March, federal Judge David Carter called Eastman and Trump's post-election efforts “a coup in search of a legal theory.” He argued it's “more likely than not that President Trump and Dr. Eastman dishonestly conspired to obstruct the Joint Session of Congress.”

Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA) is on the committee and said this,

It's actually a pretty simple story of a president who lost, who couldn't stand losing, who cared nothing about the constitution and was determined to hold on to power and who incited a mob when everything else failed.

The January 6 committee is showing ample evidence to support this claim. While it's horrifying to watch the hearings and see just how close we came to Trump overthrowing the government, it's important and fascinating to watch.

January 6 was a clear attack on the American people and an attempt to destroy our democracy.

Trump and his minions tried to steal from Americans our right to vote for the leaders we want. That's the heart of our system of government and central to the rule of law. It is the most important issue right now. If we lose our democracy, we'll have much larger and more significant problems than inflation and high gas prices.

We'll be Russia.

The next set of hearings are this week on Tuesday and Thursday 1:00 pm EST.

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Links:

https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2021/06/30/behind-bidens-2020-victory/

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-55640437

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-knew-capitol-was-breached-disparaged-pence-jan-6-tweet-key-democ-rcna30180

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/23/trump-friendly-cyber-ninjas-refused-to-comply-with-house-probe-of-arizona-election-audit.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/elections/vote-margin-of-victory/

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-knew-capitol-was-breached-disparaged-pence-jan-6-tweet-key-democ-rcna30180

https://www.businessinsider.com/photos-pence-secure-location-refusing-evacuated-capitol-jan-6-2022-6

https://www.forbes.com/sites/joewalsh/2022/06/16/who-is-john-eastman-the-attorney-at-the-center-of-trumps-january-6-strategy/?sh=59f3cb0d1ba5

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/10/jan6-trump-pence-deserves-hanged-cheney-capitol/

https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-election-trump/trump-and-17-states-back-texas-bid-to-undo-his-election-loss-at-supreme-court-idUSKBN28J1VJ

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/20/trump-documents-fake-elector-plan/