I guess this would be a good thread to keep up for the Hearing starting at 8pm EST. Except "Republicans" could better be substituted for "people."
MEANWHILE Melania Trump Was ‘Fulfilling’ Official Duties on January 6 July 21, 2022 at 4:57 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment
Melania Trump said that she was “fulfilling” her official duties as first lady of the United States of America on Jan. 6, 2021, telling Fox News that had she been fully informed of the events taking place at the Capitol during the day, she “would have immediately denounced the violence.”
Her comments come after her former chief of staff Stephanie Grisham has publicly alleged that the former first lady did not immediately sign off on a statement condemning the Capitol riot.
Don't hit her, Donald!
Mike Pence Seeks Distance from Trump July 21, 2022 at 4:54 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard 3 Comments
Washington Post: “A six-term congressman and former governor of Indiana, Pence spent nearly five years as Trump’s obsequious sidekick — a quiet badge of conservative credibility next to the volatile political newcomer, always ready with a display of fealty or a look of solemn assent. But in the 18 months since the two men split, Pence has flipped a switch, returning to the path he was on before he began praising Trump in their private chats on the golf course. Pence wants everyone to know that he is once again his own man — and his team is looking to reintroduce him ahead of a possible 2024 presidential bid.
“Advisers and allies say they think Pence is likely to run, and insist he will not base his decision on whether Trump chooses to run again.”
And then there’s this: “To watch Pence on the campaign trail today, as a yet unannounced candidate, is to witness a throwback to an earlier time in Republican politics — broadly saccharin, full of homages to Ronald Reagan and attempts at small town humor.”
New CNN Boss Makes the Rounds on Capitol Hill July 21, 2022 at 4:48 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard 6 Comments
“CNN CEO Chris Licht met with a handful of senior Congressional leaders from both sides of the aisle on Capitol Hill Tuesday in an effort to strengthen the network’s relationships with key lawmakers, many of whom have turned sour on cable news,” Axios reports.
Thursday, July 21, 2022 When did people in this country become soooo stupid...
When more than 1/2 the GOP believed trump won the election led by idiots like you, Lil Schitty......still waiting for the proof you are convinced exists to back that up......bWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!
, truthful Rev. said... I don't much like Pence, but at least he's sane.
Not really Rev....his catholic ideology negates that statement......
WASHINGTON — A divided Supreme Court on Thursday refused to block a lower court ruling that prevents the Biden administration from setting new enforcement priorities for immigrants entering the U.S. or living here illegally.
Instead, the court said it would take up the issue in early December.
Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Amy Coney Barrett and Ketanji Brown Jackson would have granted the administration’s request to begin carrying out its revised enforcement priorities, according to a brief order.
It was Jackson’s first vote in a Supreme Court case.
Other people are paying attention to the January 6th committee meeting 🙄
A majority (57%) said Trump is to blame a great deal or a good amount for the Capitol riot, including 92% of Democrats and 57% of independents, but just 18% of Republicans. The 57% overall figure is up slightly — and within the 4.1 percentage-point margin of error — from last December (53%).
Half of respondents said they think Trump should be charged with a crime, including 9 in 10 Democrats but only 10% of Republicans. Independents are split, 49% to 46%.
Six in 10 respondents said they don't think Trump will face any charges.
There has been only some, if any, movement in people's views of what happened at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Half called it an insurrection and a threat to democracy, statistically unchanged from December.
A quarter, including 40% of Republicans, described it as an unfortunate event, but one in the past, so no need to worry about it anymore.
About 1 in 5, including another 40% of Republicans, said it was a political protest protected under the First Amendment.
Notably, a majority of independents (52%) now say it was an insurrection and a threat to democracy, up 9 points from December.
The January 6 committee’s hearing this evening is likely to bring more headline-generating revelations about what Trump was doing as a mob of his supporters perpetrated one of the worst attacks on the US government in history.
And while it may be the “season finale” for the hearings, which are being orchestrated by a team that includes an ABC news executive, chances are it won’t be the last. The committee’s investigation is continuing, including into text messages from the Secret Service that were deleted following the attack, and it wouldn’t be a surprise if the lawmakers announce more sessions in the future.
But is their evidence changing Americans’ views of Trump? A Reuters/Ipsos poll released just this afternoon indicates it might be. Forty percent of Republicans say Trump was at least partly to blame for the attack, an increase of about seven percentage points from before the hearings. The proportion of Republicans who think Trump shouldn’t stand for office again also increased, to 32 percent from 26 percent in early June.
WASHINGTON, July 21 (Reuters) - Republican views on Donald Trump have darkened somewhat over six weeks of televised congressional hearings on the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by the former president's supporters, a Reuters/Ipsos poll completed on Thursday showed.
The two-day poll, finished hours before a scheduled eighth hearing of the congressional probe, showed that 40% percent of Republicans now believe Trump is at least partly to blame for the deadly riot, up from 33% in a poll conducted six weeks ago.
Trump continues to have widespread support in the Republican Party and regularly hints he will run for president again in 2024.
But six weeks of televised hearings have focused on the former leader's pressure on his vice president to help overturn his election defeat, as well as Trump's dismissal of close advisers questioning his false allegations of massive voter fraud.
Now, one third of Republican respondents think Trump should not run for president again in 2024, up from a quarter who held that view in early June when the bipartisan congressional probe began broadcasting hearings.
Former President Trump’s actions during the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection constituted a “dereliction of duty” that endangered American democracy, a group of seven retired four-star generals and admirals said in a New York Times op-ed Thursday.
“When a mob attacked the Capitol, the commander in chief failed to act to restore order and even encouraged the rioters,” the former military leaders, who served Democratic and Republican presidents, wrote.
In the op-ed, retired four-star Gens. Peter Chiarelli, John Jumper and Johnnie Wilson and retired Adms. James Loy, John Nathman, William Owens and Steve Abbot called out Trump for his inaction on Jan. 6 and consideration of using the military in schemes leading up to that day.
Ahead of Jan. 6, the op-ed authors wrote, Trump’s allies “urged him to hold on to power by unlawfully ordering the military to seize voting machines and supervise a do-over of the election,” flouting the balance of civilian control of the military.
When Trump did not call the National Guard to respond with the Capitol under siege, he ignored an “urgent need” for his intervention, the retired generals and admirals argued.
“The president and commander in chief, Donald Trump, abdicated his duty to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution,” they wrote. And in doing so, he “tested the integrity” of civilian control of the military “as never before, endangering American lives and our democracy.”
The group called on military leaders to enhance training on the chain of command and civilian-military leadership balance. They also implored civilian leaders, “including, most important, the commander in chief,” to be committed to those principles.
“The lesson of that day is clear. Our democracy is not a given. To preserve it, Americans must demand nothing less from their leaders than an unassailable commitment to country over party — and to their oaths above all.” These people didn't get their doctor to say they had bone spurs !
Reps. Elaine Luria (D-Va.) and Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) are set to lead the questioning in Thursday's primetime Jan. 6 hearing, a responsibility the lawmakers attribute in part to their military backgrounds.
Driving the news: The veterans have each tied their military service oaths to their motivation in pressing the inquiry and Luria accused former President Trump last weekend of a “dereliction of duty" for failing to act during the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
That attitude is why Democrats are looking at an epic beat down in November. They refuse to actually govern. They just want to bitch and moan about everyone else.
The Jan. 6 committee will hold its eighth public hearing Thursday, the latest in a series of high-profile productions laying out the case that the deadly riot was the result of then-President Donald Trump's attempts to overturn the election.
The committee has said that Thursday's hearing, which kicks off at 8 p.m. ET, will focus on what happened during the 187 minutes between Trump's speech during which he encouraged supporters to march to the Capitol and his tweet encouraging rioters to head home.
The hearing will feature live testimony from two former Trump White House aides, Sarah Matthews and Matthew Pottinger, who both resigned over Trump's actions on the day of the riot.
The committee has said it will hold additional hearings later this year in September.
'Dam has begun to break', Cheney says, as she announces further hearings
The committee’s Republican vice-chair Liz Cheney announced lawmakers will hold more hearings in September due to the emergence of new evidence concerning the insurrection.
“In the course of these hearings, we have received new evidence and new witnesses have bravely stepped forward. Efforts to litigate and overcome immunity and executive privilege claims have been successful, and those continue. Doors have opened, new subpoenas have been issued and the dam has begun to break. And now, even as we conduct our ninth hearing, we have considerably more to do,” she said.
“Our committee will spend August pursuing emerging information on multiple fronts before convening further hearings” the following month, Cheney said.
'They enabled Donald Trump': Secret Service expert gives list of all of the things they messed up in 2020
Sarah K. Burris
July 21, 2022
Washington Post reporter Carol Leonnig, who has spent nearly a decade reporting on the Secret Service listed off some of the most egregious behavior by the USSS in culminating in 2021 with the attack on the U.S. Capitol and a possible physical encounter with then President Donald Trump and sudden loss of documents.
Speaking to MSNBC on Thursday ahead of the eighth public hearing for the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on Congress, Leonnig listed off everything from CDC violations to roughing up protesters of Donald Trump.
"All of the things you describe, when you look at them individually, none of them smell right," said Leonnig about the recent revelation that the USSS deleted all digital communications from Jan. 5 and 6, 2021. "I've had a gut feeling of discomfort watching all of this unfold. First of all, every government agency in the executive branch is trained in how to preserve records and there is a systemic way to do this. They're given instructions on how to do this, but in this case, as the Trump administration was essentially getting booted out unhappily and the Biden administration was coming in, the Secret Service was eliminating government records. Whether they did this intentionally, maliciously, or nudge-nudge, wink-wink."
She explained that investigators must get to the bottom of how it happened and why it happened because as a government entity, under the executive branch, they are required to submit documents to the National Archives.
Two former Trump White House aides who resigned shortly after January 6, Matthew Pottinger and Sarah Matthews, are testifying.
Matthew Pottinger
Pottinger resigned as deputy national security adviser in response the January 6, the highest-ranking White House official (other than cabinet secretaries) to do so. During a previously aired clip of tesimony he gave, he said he decided to quit after seeing a Trump tweet saying that Mike Pence should have had more courage. He is a former US Marine and fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, and had worked as a reporter fo Reuters and the Wall Street Journal.
Sarah Matthews
Matthews was the former deputy press secretary. She resigned, saying she was “was deeply disturbed by what I saw” on January 6. A “lifelong Republican”, Matthews previously worked as a spokesperson for Trump’s reelection campaign.
Elaine Luria, the Virginia Democrat who is currently leading the committee’s presentation, just showed a picture of Trump in the Oval Office shortly after his speech to the crowd that went on to attack the Capitol.
“A White House employee informed the president as soon as he returned to the Oval about the riot at the Capitol,” Luria said. “Let me repeat that. Within 15 minutes of leaving the stage, president Trump knew that the Capitol was besieged and under attack.”
Earlier, former Washington DC police officer Mark Robinson, who was part of Trump’s motorcade on January 6, testified that even after Trump had been taken back to the White House, he still wanted to go to the Capitol, but was prevented by the Secret Service.
Adam Kinzinger, one of two Republican lawmakers on the January 6 committee who formerly served in the Air Force, said Trump violated his oath of office during the attack.
“Our hearings have shown many ways in which President Trump tried to stop the peaceful transfer of power in the days leading up to January 6, with each step of his plan, and betrayed his oath of office, and was derelict in his duty,”
Poverty has entered more homes under Biden. Bottom-Up Economics does that as He purposely has us racing to the Economic bottom. The US was Energy Independent under Trump , by design Biden stopped it. Then sold oil from the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve to China.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Chairman Bennie Thompson opened Thursday's prime-time hearing of the Jan. 6 investigating committee, saying Donald Trump as president did “everything in his power to overturn the election” he lost to Joe Biden, including before and during the deadly Capitol attack.
Our current president is in a dangerous cognitive decline, wants to destroy the Supreme Court by packing it, destroy the US Senate by eliminating the filibuster, destroy the country with an invasion of illegal aliens, destroy the middle class without boffins control inflation. Yet, the left who are running the country, do nt care. They obsess over a guy they just love to hate. Even minorities have had enough.
As the Capitol was attacked, White House counsel Pat Cipollone said he told Trump something along the lines of, “People need to be told, there needs to be some public announcement passed, that they need to leave the Capitol”, according to a video interview aired by the committee.
As the Capitol was attacked, White House counsel Pat Cipollone said he told Trump something along the lines of, “People need to be told, there needs to be some public announcement passed, that they need to leave the Capitol”, according to a video interview aired by the committee.
He continued to push for a strong statement from Trump discouraging the mob, joined by White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, the president’s daughter Ivanka Trump and Eric Herschmann, a White House attorney.
The committee just played Secret Service radio traffic and video footage as agents tried to evacuate vice president Mike Pence, who was supposed to preside over the certification of electoral votes.
The clips began with shots of a rioter identified as Proud Boys member Dominic Pezzola using an officer’s riot shield to smash in a window at the Capitol, allowing rioters to flood in.
“You may want to consider getting out and leaving now,” a voice said on the Secret Service radio.
“We got smoke out there,” another voice said, as the video showed someone shooting some kind of chemical during a confrontation between police in the Capitol and the rioters.
“We’re coming out now,” an agent says. The video ended before Pence was shown being taken away by Secret Service to a location that remains unknown. Trump put a target on the Vice President
American families are losing wages and wealth every month because of the worst president in history. But democrats in control of congress and the Whitehouse don't care. They only care about their agenda.
Secret Service agents feared for their lives as the Capitol was stormed, an unnamed White House security official testified to the committee.
“There’s a lot of yelling, a lot of... very personal phone calls over the radio,” the official said. Others “called to say goodbye to a family member”.
“I think there were discussions of reinforcements coming, but again, it is just chaos. They’re just yelling”, the official continued. “It sounds like that we came very close to either the service having to use lethal options, or worse.”
The testimony presented was incredibly damning and showed what was happening inside the White House that day. Dozens of aides, lawmakers and even family members begged Trump to stop the rioters. But he refused.
Instead, Trump did what he often did: he sat and watched television.
Said Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL): “President Trump did not fail to act during the 187 minutes between leaving the Ellipse and telling the mob to go home. He chose not to act.”
The culmination of the testimony was that Trump was in control of the rioters from start to finish.
Once again, detailed testimony explained how close Vice President Mike Pence came to people who wanted to harm him. His own Secret Service agents feared for their lives and sent messages to their families in case they were killed.
Trump’s tweet at 2:24 p.m. attacking Pence was a “green light” for the crowd, according to former White House aide Sarah Matthews.
Said Matthews: “He was pouring gasoline on the fire.”
I’ve lost track of how many crimes were committed by Donald Trump in the days leading up to January 6.
But on that day it’s completely clear he violated his oath of office.
The Jan. 6 select committee on Thursday presented evidence that the Secret Service and National Security Council expressed concerns on Jan. 6 that then-Vice President Mike Pence would be stuck at the Capitol as the riot unfolded.
Why it matters: The evidence is meant to underscores the stakes on that day as rioters got within just five t0 10 feet of the vice president, who they blamed for refusing to attempt to overturn the election in then-President Trump's favor.
The Jan. 6 select committee on Thursday presented evidence that the Secret Service and National Security Council expressed concerns on Jan. 6 that then-Vice President Mike Pence would be stuck at the Capitol as the riot unfolded.
Why it matters: The evidence is meant to underscores the stakes on that day as rioters got within just five t0 10 feet of the vice president, who they blamed for refusing to attempt to overturn the election in then-President Trump's favor.
"Thursday on CNN’s “New Day,” network political commentator Van Jones urged President Joe Biden to take the economy more “seriously” with how it has affected black people.
According to Jones, inflation and the record-high gas prices have “really walloped the black community.” After pointing out how black voters had shown up to vote in recent elections expecting to make things better for themselves, Jones argued it had actually gotten “worse."
Myballs said... American families are losing wages and wealth every month because of the worst president in history. But democrats in control of congress and the Whitehouse don't care. They only care about their agenda.
They really don’t get anti Trump isn’t an agenda
The entire world has moved on except really old hippy wannabes
You know if you’re in an asylum that precuts you’re nanners, what else do you have to obsess on?
The day after the attack, White House staff pressed Trump to give another speech to the nation condemning the attack on the Capitol, which committee member Elaine Luria said Trump was motivated to do “because of concerns he might be removed from power under the 25th Amendment, or by impeachment.”
The committee just showed video of him recording that speech and struggling to accept that the election was finished.
“But this election is now over. Congress has certified the results,” Trump said in the speech, before saying to his staff: “I don’t want to say the election’s over. I just want to say Congress has certified the results, without saying the election’s over, okay?”
“One day after he incited an insurrection based on a lie, president Trump still could not say that the election was over”, Luria said.
“Get Ivanka down here”. That’s what chief of staff Mark Meadows said as White House officials tried to figure out how to get Trump to stop the rioters at the Capitol, according to testimony from then-White House counsel Pat Cipollone.
“I remember him getting Ivanka involved, said ‘get Ivanka down here.’ He felt that would be important”, Cipollone said.
Ivanka Trump is, of course, the president’s daughter, who was an adviser in the White House and told the committee she never believed Trump’s claims the 2020 election was stolen.
Ivanka Trump says she does not believe father’s claim 2020 election was stolen.
The committee played outtakes from videotaped Jan. 7 remarks by then-President Donald Trump on the riot at the U.S. Capitol.
In one of the outtakes, Mr. Trump appears to be reluctant to say directly that the election is over.
“I don’t want to say the election is over,” Mr. Trump says in the video. “I just want to say Congress has certified the results without saying the election is over, okay?”
“Now, Congress has certified the results,” Mr. Trump said in the final version of the video, which the White House distributed on social media. “A new administration will be inaugurated on January 20th. My focus now turns to ensuring a smooth, orderly and seamless transition of power.”
After leaving office, Mr. Trump has continued to maintain that the election was stolen, and he is weighing running again in 2024.
The case against Trump was made by 'his own friends' not political enemies, Cheney says Zoë Richards
35m ago / 9:38 PM CDT In closing remarks, Cheney thanked Matthews and Pottinger for their testimony, saying they would be remembered for their "bravery and honor."
Cheney also acknowledged Cassidy Hutchinson, who has faced an onslaught of criticism and scrutiny over damning testimony that detailed a physical altercation between Trump and his security detail after leaving the Ellipse.
"She sat here alone, took the oath and testified before millions of Americans," Cheney said of Hutchinson. "She knew all along she would be attacked by President Trump and by the 50-, 60- and 70-year-old men who hide themselves behind executive privilege."
She added that the committee's case against Trump was "not made by witnesses who were his political enemies," but by people in his own party, citing the many Republicans who have come forward to testify.
"It is instead a series of confessions by Donald Trump’s own appointees, his own friends, his own campaign officials, people who worked for him for years, and his own family," Cheney said. "They have come forward and they have told the American people the truth."
They used his regular methods to show how irrational behavior..
The Jan. 6 committee, through testimony from top White House officials and Donald Trump's twitter feed, showed how the former president watched in real time as a violent mob of his supporters attacked the Capitol but resisted calls to act.
Why it matters: Without the major revelations of past hearings, Thursday's primetime presentation, the last of the summer, was about driving home how many top Trump officials, members of Congress and allies were appalled by Trump's inaction on Jan. 6, and the former president's unabashed decision to let the insurrection play out for hours.
The committee aimed to put the totality of its eight hearings in context: that Trump and his team knew the election was stolen early on, was aware that his supporters on Jan. 6 were armed and told them to march to the Capitol anyway, and then sat back and watched as the mob descended.
The panel showed how many of Trump's allies, including top Republicans in the House and Senate, were united in their opposition to how he handled the insurrection. Expect the spotlight on those members to follow them through the next months.The committee also used Trump's favorite mediums, Twitter and TV, against him — showing raw footage of his addresses on Jan. 6 and 7 to demonstrate how he rebuffed his team in insisting on downplaying the attack and refusing to concede he lost the election.
WASHINGTON — Then-President Trump did not leave his personal dining room for most of the time a violent mob raged at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, the House committee investigating the insurrection said in its prime-time hearing Thursday. “He refused to defend our nation and our Constitution. He refused to do what every president must,” Vice Chair Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) said.
Focusing on Trump’s inaction, the panel has provided a moment-by-moment accounting of the 187 minutes between when the attack on the U.S. Capitol began and when the president released a video on Twitter urging his supporters to withdraw. Trump became aware of the violent mob immediately after his speech at the Ellipse near the White House, said Rep. Elaine Luria (D-Va.), who led the hearing with Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.).
“Within 15 minutes of leaving the stage, President Trump knew that the Capitol was besieged and under attack,” Luria said.
Instead of taking action, Trump walked into his private dining room next to the Oval Office and watched coverage of the attack on Fox News for two hours, and made calls to senators and his attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani. Records of the president’s daily movements and phone logs show no entries between when Trump returned to the White House and when he released a video telling supporters to go home at 4:17 p.m.
The Secret Service’s deletion of text messages is increasingly evolving into a scandal for the agency best-known for protecting the president. Democratic committee member Zoe Lofgren confirmed that two top officials who worked with Trump now have retained their own attorneys.
Americans aren’t the most attentive political observers. But thanks in part to Hollywood, they have a pretty clear vision of what they expect their president to do in an unfolding crisis, especially an attack on U.S. citizens at home or abroad. He (or she, in the movies at least) will march down to the Situation Room, confer with advisers, and at some point address the nation in a sober televised speech.
During the crucial afternoon hours of January 6, 2021, as a mob of protesters stormed and briefly occupied the Capitol, then-President Donald Trump did none of those things. As laid out this evening by the House select committee investigating the assault, Trump spent the afternoon sitting in his private White House dining room, staring for hours at a television tuned to Fox News. He made no effort to quell the violence or protect congressional leaders under threat, and when he was told the rioters were chanting that they wanted to “hang” Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence, Trump said that Pence deserved it. The mob came so close to Pence that, the committee revealed tonight, the Secret Service agents protecting him feared for their lives and wanted “to say goodbye” to their families.
For hours, Trump ignored pleas from his staff, his allies in Congress, and even his own daughter Ivanka. Many of those around the president wanted him to forcefully call off the mob and deliver a national address to denounce the violence. All he would do was film and tweet out a short video in which he gently asked his supporters to “go home in peace.” “He refused to defend our nation and our Constitution,” Representative Liz Cheney, the Republican of Wyoming, said. “He refused to do what every American president must.”
The White House was paralyzed for three hours on Jan. 6 as former President Trump rebuffed frantic pleas from anxious aides to intervene to quell the violence at the U.S. Capitol, according to evidence presented Thursday night by the House committee investigating last year’s rampage.
Trump’s inaction over that 187-minute span — even in the face of desperate calls from top staff and close family — allowed the riot to escalate, investigators charged, threatening the lives of lawmakers and his own vice president, Mike Pence, who was at the Capitol on Jan. 6 to certify Joe Biden’s election victory.
That inactivity was no accident, in the panel’s telling, but just another part of Trump’s plan to weaponize the fury of his supporters — convinced by Trump himself that the election was “stolen” — in an effort to remain in power despite his election defeat.
“President Trump did not fail to act during the 187 minutes between leaving the Ellipse and telling the mob to go home,” said Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.). “He chose not to act.”
Thursday’s prime-time hearing — the eighth in six weeks — was an autopsy of those tense 187 minutes, from the moment Trump finished his rally speech at the White House Ellipse, where he encouraged supporters to “fight like hell” and march to the Capitol, until he released a video urging the rioters to go home.
The account of those hours portrayed a president fixated on the riot, which he was following closely on Fox News from the head of the table in the White House dining room, a witness testified. He would remain there for more than two-and-a-half hours, beginning at 1:25 p.m., the committee said, calling Republican lawmakers, to urge them to fight the election results, and his campaign lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, who was spearheading the “stop the steal” campaign.
The details of Trump’s actions during those hours are only now coming into focus, based on witness testimony, and the committee suggested the secrecy was by design.
The presidential daily diary contains no information from the period between 1:21 p.m. and 4:03 p.m.; the call log is empty for nearly 8 hours that day; and the White House photographer was prohibited from taking pictures of Trump, despite her efforts to do so.
Pat Cippollone, Trump’s former chief counsel, was squarely in the former group. He was among the few people to confront Trump in the dining room during the violence, and his message to the president, he testified, “was pretty clear.”
“There needed to be an immediate and forceful … public statement that people need to leave the Capitol now,” Cipollone said.
To boost its case, the committee brought in two former White House staffers who resigned in protest over how Trump handled Jan. 6: Matthew Pottinger, former deputy director for the National Security Council, and Sarah Matthews, then deputy press secretary. Both of them described being appalled by Trump’s refusal to act to protect the Capitol, and both of them would resign on Jan. 6 to protest what they called his failure to meet his most basic presidential obligations.
For Matthews, the final straw was the 4:17 p.m. Rose Garden video, in which Trump told the crowd to disperse, calling them “special people.” For Pottinger, the decision came even earlier, after Trump’s 2:24 p.m. tweet attacking Pence, who quickly became a target of the violent mob.
“That was the moment that I decided that I was going to resign, that that would be my last day at the White House,” Pottinger said.
“I simply didn’t want to be associated with the events that were unfolding on the Capitol.”
While staffers were making little headway with Trump, the panel demonstrated the fear felt at the Capitol.
Those protecting Pence feared for his life as well as their own, and, just 40 feet away from rioters, believed they may soon need to use deadly force.
“There was a lot of yelling. A lot of very personal calls over the radio, so it was disturbing. I don’t like talking about it, but there were calls to say goodbye to family members, so on, so forth,” an anonymous official said in audio played Thursday.
71 comments:
I guess this would be a good thread to keep up for the Hearing starting at 8pm EST. Except "Republicans" could better be substituted for "people."
MEANWHILE
Melania Trump Was ‘Fulfilling’ Official Duties on January 6
July 21, 2022 at 4:57 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment
Melania Trump said that she was “fulfilling” her official duties as first lady of the United States of America on Jan. 6, 2021,
telling Fox News that had she been fully informed of the events taking place at the Capitol during the day, she “would have immediately denounced the violence.”
Her comments come after her former chief of staff Stephanie Grisham has publicly alleged that the former first lady did not immediately sign off on a statement condemning the Capitol riot.
Don't hit her, Donald!
Mike Pence Seeks Distance from Trump
July 21, 2022 at 4:54 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard 3 Comments
Washington Post: “A six-term congressman and former governor of Indiana, Pence spent nearly five years as Trump’s obsequious sidekick — a quiet badge of conservative credibility next to the volatile political newcomer, always ready with a display of fealty or a look of solemn assent. But in the 18 months since the two men split, Pence has flipped a switch, returning to the path he was on before he began praising Trump in their private chats on the golf course. Pence wants everyone to know that he is once again his own man — and his team is looking to reintroduce him ahead of a possible 2024 presidential bid.
“Advisers and allies say they think Pence is likely to run, and insist he will not base his decision on whether Trump chooses to run again.”
And then there’s this:
“To watch Pence on the campaign trail today, as a yet unannounced candidate, is to witness
a throwback to an earlier time in Republican politics
— broadly saccharin,
full of homages to Ronald Reagan
and attempts at small town humor.”
New CNN Boss Makes the Rounds on Capitol Hill
July 21, 2022 at 4:48 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard 6 Comments
“CNN CEO Chris Licht met with a handful of senior Congressional leaders from both sides of the aisle on Capitol Hill Tuesday in an effort to strengthen the network’s relationships with key lawmakers, many of whom have turned sour on cable news,” Axios reports.
I don't much like Pence, but at least he's sane.
Thursday, July 21, 2022
When did people in this country become soooo stupid...
When more than 1/2 the GOP believed trump won the election led by idiots like you, Lil Schitty......still waiting for the proof you are convinced exists to back that up......bWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!
, truthful Rev. said...
I don't much like Pence, but at least he's sane.
Not really Rev....his catholic ideology negates that statement......
So after Biden spent a year telling us he has no influence on gad prices, now he wants to take credit for the slight drop.
And some progressives will believe him. How did people get so stupid indeed.
Blame a prez for every bad thing that happens but credit him not at all for any good things that happen?
The whole world is having problems with energy and inflation and warming.
WASHINGTON — A divided Supreme Court on Thursday refused to block a lower court ruling that prevents the Biden administration from setting new enforcement priorities for immigrants entering the U.S. or living here illegally.
Instead, the court said it would take up the issue in early December.
Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Amy Coney Barrett and Ketanji Brown Jackson would have granted the administration’s request to begin carrying out its revised enforcement priorities, according to a brief order.
It was Jackson’s first vote in a Supreme Court case.
Other people are paying attention to the January 6th committee meeting 🙄
A majority (57%) said Trump is to blame a great deal or a good amount for the Capitol riot, including 92% of Democrats and 57% of independents, but just 18% of Republicans. The 57% overall figure is up slightly — and within the 4.1 percentage-point margin of error — from last December (53%).
Half of respondents said they think Trump should be charged with a crime, including 9 in 10 Democrats but only 10% of Republicans. Independents are split, 49% to 46%.
Six in 10 respondents said they don't think Trump will face any charges.
There has been only some, if any, movement in people's views of what happened at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Half called it an insurrection and a threat to democracy, statistically unchanged from December.
A quarter, including 40% of Republicans, described it as an unfortunate event, but one in the past, so no need to worry about it anymore.
About 1 in 5, including another 40% of Republicans, said it was a political protest protected under the First Amendment.
Notably, a majority of independents (52%) now say it was an insurrection and a threat to democracy, up 9 points from December.
Only 20% agree with you on this insurrection.
Nonresponsive. I said he had no influence on gas prices. He doesn't get to take credit when they drop s little.
More people not as dumb as you
The January 6 committee’s hearing this evening is likely to bring more headline-generating revelations about what Trump was doing as a mob of his supporters perpetrated one of the worst attacks on the US government in history.
And while it may be the “season finale” for the hearings, which are being orchestrated by a team that includes an ABC news executive, chances are it won’t be the last. The committee’s investigation is continuing, including into text messages from the Secret Service that were deleted following the attack, and it wouldn’t be a surprise if the lawmakers announce more sessions in the future.
But is their evidence changing Americans’ views of Trump? A Reuters/Ipsos poll released just this afternoon indicates it might be. Forty percent of Republicans say Trump was at least partly to blame for the attack, an increase of about seven percentage points from before the hearings. The proportion of Republicans who think Trump shouldn’t stand for office again also increased, to 32 percent from 26 percent in early June.
WASHINGTON, July 21 (Reuters) - Republican views on Donald Trump have darkened somewhat over six weeks of televised congressional hearings on the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by the former president's supporters, a Reuters/Ipsos poll completed on Thursday showed.
The two-day poll, finished hours before a scheduled eighth hearing of the congressional probe, showed that 40% percent of Republicans now believe Trump is at least partly to blame for the deadly riot, up from 33% in a poll conducted six weeks ago.
Trump continues to have widespread support in the Republican Party and regularly hints he will run for president again in 2024.
But six weeks of televised hearings have focused on the former leader's pressure on his vice president to help overturn his election defeat, as well as Trump's dismissal of close advisers questioning his false allegations of massive voter fraud.
Now, one third of Republican respondents think Trump should not run for president again in 2024, up from a quarter who held that view in early June when the bipartisan congressional probe began broadcasting hearings.
Former President Trump’s actions during the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection constituted a “dereliction of duty” that endangered American democracy, a group of seven retired four-star generals and admirals said in a New York Times op-ed Thursday.
“When a mob attacked the Capitol, the commander in chief failed to act to restore order and even encouraged the rioters,” the former military leaders, who served Democratic and Republican presidents, wrote.
In the op-ed, retired four-star Gens. Peter Chiarelli, John Jumper and Johnnie Wilson and retired Adms. James Loy, John Nathman, William Owens and Steve Abbot called out Trump for his inaction on Jan. 6 and consideration of using the military in schemes leading up to that day.
Ahead of Jan. 6, the op-ed authors wrote, Trump’s allies “urged him to hold on to power by unlawfully ordering the military to seize voting machines and supervise a do-over of the election,” flouting the balance of civilian control of the military.
When Trump did not call the National Guard to respond with the Capitol under siege, he ignored an “urgent need” for his intervention, the retired generals and admirals argued.
“The president and commander in chief, Donald Trump, abdicated his duty to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution,” they wrote. And in doing so, he “tested the integrity” of civilian control of the military “as never before, endangering American lives and our democracy.”
The group called on military leaders to enhance training on the chain of command and civilian-military leadership balance. They also implored civilian leaders, “including, most important, the commander in chief,” to be committed to those principles.
“The lesson of that day is clear. Our democracy is not a given. To preserve it, Americans must demand nothing less from their leaders than an unassailable commitment to country over party — and to their oaths above all.”
These people didn't get their doctor to say they had bone spurs !
Our current president has covid, is nearly 80 years old, is in cognitive decline. But you still obsess over the guy who left office 18 months ago.
Something is wrong with you.
Reps. Elaine Luria (D-Va.) and Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) are set to lead the questioning in Thursday's primetime Jan. 6 hearing, a responsibility the lawmakers attribute in part to their military backgrounds.
Driving the news: The veterans have each tied their military service oaths to their motivation in pressing the inquiry and Luria accused former President Trump last weekend of a “dereliction of duty" for failing to act during the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
This is about Trump not Joe Biden 🙄
VP Harris approval among indy voters is just 16%. This administration Isa disaster of historic proportions.
Biden is not threatening to get rid of democracy.
Trump is.
This is about Trump not Joe Biden
That attitude is why Democrats are looking at an epic beat down in November. They refuse to actually govern. They just want to bitch and moan about everyone else.
The Party of perpetual complaining...
But Biden is threatening democracy. He's threatening to ruin both the US Senate and the Supreme Court.
The Jan. 6 committee will hold its eighth public hearing Thursday, the latest in a series of high-profile productions laying out the case that the deadly riot was the result of then-President Donald Trump's attempts to overturn the election.
The committee has said that Thursday's hearing, which kicks off at 8 p.m. ET, will focus on what happened during the 187 minutes between Trump's speech during which he encouraged supporters to march to the Capitol and his tweet encouraging rioters to head home.
The hearing will feature live testimony from two former Trump White House aides, Sarah Matthews and Matthew Pottinger, who both resigned over Trump's actions on the day of the riot.
The committee has said it will hold additional hearings later this year in September.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbRVqWbHGuo
He told the mob to invade the Capital building on January 6th.
He was the person with the authority to send in armed forces to protect the vice President.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbRVqWbHGuo
20.17
'Dam has begun to break', Cheney says, as she announces further hearings
The committee’s Republican vice-chair Liz Cheney announced lawmakers will hold more hearings in September due to the emergence of new evidence concerning the insurrection.
“In the course of these hearings, we have received new evidence and new witnesses have bravely stepped forward. Efforts to litigate and overcome immunity and executive privilege claims have been successful, and those continue. Doors have opened, new subpoenas have been issued and the dam has begun to break. And now, even as we conduct our ninth hearing, we have considerably more to do,” she said.
“Our committee will spend August pursuing emerging information on multiple fronts before convening further hearings” the following month, Cheney said.
'They enabled Donald Trump': Secret Service expert gives list of all of the things they messed up in 2020
Sarah K. Burris
July 21, 2022
Washington Post reporter Carol Leonnig, who has spent nearly a decade reporting on the Secret Service listed off some of the most egregious behavior by the USSS in culminating in 2021 with the attack on the U.S. Capitol and a possible physical encounter with then President Donald Trump and sudden loss of documents.
Speaking to MSNBC on Thursday ahead of the eighth public hearing for the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on Congress, Leonnig listed off everything from CDC violations to roughing up protesters of Donald Trump.
"All of the things you describe, when you look at them individually, none of them smell right," said Leonnig about the recent revelation that the USSS deleted all digital communications from Jan. 5 and 6, 2021. "I've had a gut feeling of discomfort watching all of this unfold. First of all, every government agency in the executive branch is trained in how to preserve records and there is a systemic way to do this. They're given instructions on how to do this, but in this case, as the Trump administration was essentially getting booted out unhappily and the Biden administration was coming in, the Secret Service was eliminating government records. Whether they did this intentionally, maliciously, or nudge-nudge, wink-wink."
She explained that investigators must get to the bottom of how it happened and why it happened because as a government entity, under the executive branch, they are required to submit documents to the National Archives.
Two former Trump White House aides who resigned shortly after January 6, Matthew Pottinger and Sarah Matthews, are testifying.
Matthew Pottinger
Pottinger resigned as deputy national security adviser in response the January 6, the highest-ranking White House official (other than cabinet secretaries) to do so. During a previously aired clip of tesimony he gave, he said he decided to quit after seeing a Trump tweet saying that Mike Pence should have had more courage. He is a former US Marine and fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, and had worked as a reporter fo Reuters and the Wall Street Journal.
Sarah Matthews
Matthews was the former deputy press secretary. She resigned, saying she was “was deeply disturbed by what I saw” on January 6. A “lifelong Republican”, Matthews previously worked as a spokesperson for Trump’s reelection campaign.
"MyballsinthewoodsagainJuly 21, 2022 at 6:50 PM
But Biden is threatening democracy. He's threatening to ruin both the US Senate and the Supreme Court"
Exactly 💯 % right.
Elaine Luria, the Virginia Democrat who is currently leading the committee’s presentation, just showed a picture of Trump in the Oval Office shortly after his speech to the crowd that went on to attack the Capitol.
“A White House employee informed the president as soon as he returned to the Oval about the riot at the Capitol,” Luria said. “Let me repeat that. Within 15 minutes of leaving the stage, president Trump knew that the Capitol was besieged and under attack.”
Earlier, former Washington DC police officer Mark Robinson, who was part of Trump’s motorcade on January 6, testified that even after Trump had been taken back to the White House, he still wanted to go to the Capitol, but was prevented by the Secret Service.
Adam Kinzinger, one of two Republican lawmakers on the January 6 committee who formerly served in the Air Force, said Trump violated his oath of office during the attack.
“Our hearings have shown many ways in which President Trump tried to stop the peaceful transfer of power in the days leading up to January 6, with each step of his plan, and betrayed his oath of office, and was derelict in his duty,”
Poverty has entered more homes under Biden.
Bottom-Up Economics does that as He purposely has us racing to the Economic bottom.
The US was Energy Independent under Trump , by design Biden stopped it.
Then sold oil from the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve to China.
Jan. 6 panel reveals how Trump sat on his hands during attack
Krugman said he was so stupid.
Dead wrong on Biden's Inflation.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Chairman Bennie Thompson opened Thursday's prime-time hearing of the Jan. 6 investigating committee, saying Donald Trump as president did “everything in his power to overturn the election” he lost to Joe Biden, including before and during the deadly Capitol attack.
Our current president is in a dangerous cognitive decline, wants to destroy the Supreme Court by packing it, destroy the US Senate by eliminating the filibuster, destroy the country with an invasion of illegal aliens, destroy the middle class without boffins control inflation. Yet, the left who are running the country, do nt care. They obsess over a guy they just love to hate. Even minorities have had enough.
As the Capitol was attacked, White House counsel Pat Cipollone said he told Trump something along the lines of, “People need to be told, there needs to be some public announcement passed, that they need to leave the Capitol”, according to a video interview aired by the committee.
Last report before this on was a Negative 3.3.
Now this Recession affirming Number.
Fed manufacturing index July
Off the cliff fall -12.3
As the Capitol was attacked, White House counsel Pat Cipollone said he told Trump something along the lines of, “People need to be told, there needs to be some public announcement passed, that they need to leave the Capitol”, according to a video interview aired by the committee.
He continued to push for a strong statement from Trump discouraging the mob, joined by White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, the president’s daughter Ivanka Trump and Eric Herschmann, a White House attorney.
James tell usthe sunshine you see in the Current US Economy?
Roger is lost in Hate.
He will never rejoin those of here that are normal.
The committee just played Secret Service radio traffic and video footage as agents tried to evacuate vice president Mike Pence, who was supposed to preside over the certification of electoral votes.
The clips began with shots of a rioter identified as Proud Boys member Dominic Pezzola using an officer’s riot shield to smash in a window at the Capitol, allowing rioters to flood in.
“You may want to consider getting out and leaving now,” a voice said on the Secret Service radio.
“We got smoke out there,” another voice said, as the video showed someone shooting some kind of chemical during a confrontation between police in the Capitol and the rioters.
“We’re coming out now,” an agent says. The video ended before Pence was shown being taken away by Secret Service to a location that remains unknown. Trump put a target on the Vice President
American families are losing wages and wealth every month because of the worst president in history. But democrats in control of congress and the Whitehouse don't care. They only care about their agenda.
Blame a prez for every bad thing that happens but credit him not at all for any good things that happen?"
Give us your top 3 things Bidenomics has improved the lives of Americans?
Secret Service agents feared for their lives as the Capitol was stormed, an unnamed White House security official testified to the committee.
“There’s a lot of yelling, a lot of... very personal phone calls over the radio,” the official said. Others “called to say goodbye to a family member”.
“I think there were discussions of reinforcements coming, but again, it is just chaos. They’re just yelling”, the official continued. “It sounds like that we came very close to either the service having to use lethal options, or worse.”
The Socialist Democrats agenda.
Pain
Notice how often Biden and his team.tell Americans, we have to feel pain.
Never have I heard such a thing during my life time.
Bidenomics has hurt Americans lives. Not helped.
Exactly ,Myballsinthewoodsagain.
Bidenomics ended our oil independence and the Biden tax hike per family is around $5,000.
The testimony presented was incredibly damning and showed what was happening inside the White House that day. Dozens of aides, lawmakers and even family members begged Trump to stop the rioters. But he refused.
Instead, Trump did what he often did: he sat and watched television.
Said Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL): “President Trump did not fail to act during the 187 minutes between leaving the Ellipse and telling the mob to go home. He chose not to act.”
The culmination of the testimony was that Trump was in control of the rioters from start to finish.
Once again, detailed testimony explained how close Vice President Mike Pence came to people who wanted to harm him. His own Secret Service agents feared for their lives and sent messages to their families in case they were killed.
Trump’s tweet at 2:24 p.m. attacking Pence was a “green light” for the crowd, according to former White House aide Sarah Matthews.
Said Matthews: “He was pouring gasoline on the fire.”
I’ve lost track of how many crimes were committed by Donald Trump in the days leading up to January 6.
But on that day it’s completely clear he violated his oath of office.
Body bags are piling up on the border but Roger only cares about Jan 6. Such a pathetic old man.
The Jan. 6 select committee on Thursday presented evidence that the Secret Service and National Security Council expressed concerns on Jan. 6 that then-Vice President Mike Pence would be stuck at the Capitol as the riot unfolded.
Why it matters: The evidence is meant to underscores the stakes on that day as rioters got within just five t0 10 feet of the vice president, who they blamed for refusing to attempt to overturn the election in then-President Trump's favor.
"Inflation costing Americans an extra $460 per month, analysis says.Jun 10, 2022"
New York Post.
Killing the middle and low income earners.
You really don't understand that he is the biggest threat in our history.
Vote for Republicans but not him
Even Mitch the don't want him again
The Jan. 6 select committee on Thursday presented evidence that the Secret Service and National Security Council expressed concerns on Jan. 6 that then-Vice President Mike Pence would be stuck at the Capitol as the riot unfolded.
Why it matters: The evidence is meant to underscores the stakes on that day as rioters got within just five t0 10 feet of the vice president, who they blamed for refusing to attempt to overturn the election in then-President Trump's favor.
Madam Buttigeg
"The more pain that we are all experiencing from the high price of gas, the more benefit there is for those who can access electric vehicles,"
Pain.
We The People must feel pain to advance President Bidens 'Liberal World Order".
Trump leaves office poverty stood at
11.4%.
Bottom-Up Economics today , poverty rockets up to 14.4 %.
2019 wages rose 5% with inflation at 2%. Now wages rising 4% with inflation up 9%.
Democrats don't care. They only want to feed their hatred of Trump.
"Thursday on CNN’s “New Day,” network political commentator Van Jones urged President Joe Biden to take the economy more “seriously” with how it has affected black people.
According to Jones, inflation and the record-high gas prices have “really walloped the black community.” After pointing out how black voters had shown up to vote in recent elections expecting to make things better for themselves, Jones argued it had actually gotten “worse."
Myballs said...
American families are losing wages and wealth every month because of the worst president in history. But democrats in control of congress and the Whitehouse don't care. They only care about their agenda.
They really don’t get anti Trump isn’t an agenda
The entire world has moved on except really old hippy wannabes
You know if you’re in an asylum that precuts you’re nanners, what else do you have to obsess on?
The day after the attack, White House staff pressed Trump to give another speech to the nation condemning the attack on the Capitol, which committee member Elaine Luria said Trump was motivated to do “because of concerns he might be removed from power under the 25th Amendment, or by impeachment.”
The committee just showed video of him recording that speech and struggling to accept that the election was finished.
“But this election is now over. Congress has certified the results,” Trump said in the speech, before saying to his staff: “I don’t want to say the election’s over. I just want to say Congress has certified the results, without saying the election’s over, okay?”
“One day after he incited an insurrection based on a lie, president Trump still could not say that the election was over”, Luria said.
“Get Ivanka down here”. That’s what chief of staff Mark Meadows said as White House officials tried to figure out how to get Trump to stop the rioters at the Capitol, according to testimony from then-White House counsel Pat Cipollone.
“I remember him getting Ivanka involved, said ‘get Ivanka down here.’ He felt that would be important”, Cipollone said.
Ivanka Trump is, of course, the president’s daughter, who was an adviser in the White House and told the committee she never believed Trump’s claims the 2020 election was stolen.
Ivanka Trump says she does not believe father’s claim 2020 election was stolen.
Said Matthews: “He was pouring gasoline on the fire.”
I’ve lost track of how many crimes were committed by Donald Trump in the days leading up to January 6.
But on that day it’s completely clear he violated his oath of office.
Wsj
The committee played outtakes from videotaped Jan. 7 remarks by then-President Donald Trump on the riot at the U.S. Capitol.
In one of the outtakes, Mr. Trump appears to be reluctant to say directly that the election is over.
“I don’t want to say the election is over,” Mr. Trump says in the video. “I just want to say Congress has certified the results without saying the election is over, okay?”
“Now, Congress has certified the results,” Mr. Trump said in the final version of the video, which the White House distributed on social media. “A new administration will be inaugurated on January 20th. My focus now turns to ensuring a smooth, orderly and seamless transition of power.”
After leaving office, Mr. Trump has continued to maintain that the election was stolen, and he is weighing running again in 2024.
WOW! WOW, WOW, WOW!
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/live-blog/january-6-committee-hearings-live-updates-day-8-rcna36739#rcrd3890
https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1550307253940621312?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1550307253940621312%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=file%3A%2F%2F%2Fdata%2Fdata%2Fcom.guardian%2Ffiles%2Fus-news%2Flive%2F2022%2Fjul%2F21%2Fjan-6-final-hearing-trump-capitol-latest-updates
The case against Trump was made by 'his own friends' not political enemies, Cheney says
Zoë Richards
35m ago / 9:38 PM CDT
In closing remarks, Cheney thanked Matthews and Pottinger for their testimony, saying they would be remembered for their "bravery and honor."
Cheney also acknowledged Cassidy Hutchinson, who has faced an onslaught of criticism and scrutiny over damning testimony that detailed a physical altercation between Trump and his security detail after leaving the Ellipse.
"She sat here alone, took the oath and testified before millions of Americans," Cheney said of Hutchinson. "She knew all along she would be attacked by President Trump and by the 50-, 60- and 70-year-old men who hide themselves behind executive privilege."
She added that the committee's case against Trump was "not made by witnesses who were his political enemies," but by people in his own party, citing the many Republicans who have come forward to testify.
"It is instead a series of confessions by Donald Trump’s own appointees, his own friends, his own campaign officials, people who worked for him for years, and his own family," Cheney said. "They have come forward and they have told the American people the truth."
They used his regular methods to show how irrational behavior..
The Jan. 6 committee, through testimony from top White House officials and Donald Trump's twitter feed, showed how the former president watched in real time as a violent mob of his supporters attacked the Capitol but resisted calls to act.
Why it matters: Without the major revelations of past hearings, Thursday's primetime presentation, the last of the summer, was about driving home how many top Trump officials, members of Congress and allies were appalled by Trump's inaction on Jan. 6, and the former president's unabashed decision to let the insurrection play out for hours.
The committee aimed to put the totality of its eight hearings in context: that Trump and his team knew the election was stolen early on, was aware that his supporters on Jan. 6 were armed and told them to march to the Capitol anyway, and then sat back and watched as the mob descended.
The panel showed how many of Trump's allies, including top Republicans in the House and Senate, were united in their opposition to how he handled the insurrection. Expect the spotlight on those members to follow them through the next months.The committee also used Trump's favorite mediums, Twitter and TV, against him — showing raw footage of his addresses on Jan. 6 and 7 to demonstrate how he rebuffed his team in insisting on downplaying the attack and refusing to concede he lost the election.
He should never be the President again.
WASHINGTON — Then-President Trump did not leave his personal dining room for most of the time a violent mob raged at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, the House committee investigating the insurrection said in its prime-time hearing Thursday.
“He refused to defend our nation and our Constitution. He refused to do what every president must,” Vice Chair Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) said.
Focusing on Trump’s inaction, the panel has provided a moment-by-moment accounting of the 187 minutes between when the attack on the U.S. Capitol began and when the president released a video on Twitter urging his supporters to withdraw. Trump became aware of the violent mob immediately after his speech at the Ellipse near the White House, said Rep. Elaine Luria (D-Va.), who led the hearing with Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.).
“Within 15 minutes of leaving the stage, President Trump knew that the Capitol was besieged and under attack,” Luria said.
Instead of taking action, Trump walked into his private dining room next to the Oval Office and watched coverage of the attack on Fox News for two hours, and made calls to senators and his attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani. Records of the president’s daily movements and phone logs show no entries between when Trump returned to the White House and when he released a video telling supporters to go home at 4:17 p.m.
The Secret Service’s deletion of text messages is increasingly evolving into a scandal for the agency best-known for protecting the president. Democratic committee member Zoe Lofgren confirmed that two top officials who worked with Trump now have retained their own attorneys.
This will wake up America.
Americans aren’t the most attentive political observers. But thanks in part to Hollywood, they have a pretty clear vision of what they expect their president to do in an unfolding crisis, especially an attack on U.S. citizens at home or abroad. He (or she, in the movies at least) will march down to the Situation Room, confer with advisers, and at some point address the nation in a sober televised speech.
During the crucial afternoon hours of January 6, 2021, as a mob of protesters stormed and briefly occupied the Capitol, then-President Donald Trump did none of those things. As laid out this evening by the House select committee investigating the assault, Trump spent the afternoon sitting in his private White House dining room, staring for hours at a television tuned to Fox News. He made no effort to quell the violence or protect congressional leaders under threat, and when he was told the rioters were chanting that they wanted to “hang” Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence, Trump said that Pence deserved it. The mob came so close to Pence that, the committee revealed tonight, the Secret Service agents protecting him feared for their lives and wanted “to say goodbye” to their families.
For hours, Trump ignored pleas from his staff, his allies in Congress, and even his own daughter Ivanka. Many of those around the president wanted him to forcefully call off the mob and deliver a national address to denounce the violence. All he would do was film and tweet out a short video in which he gently asked his supporters to “go home in peace.” “He refused to defend our nation and our Constitution,” Representative Liz Cheney, the Republican of Wyoming, said. “He refused to do what every American president must.”
The White House was paralyzed for three hours on Jan. 6 as former President Trump rebuffed frantic pleas from anxious aides to intervene to quell the violence at the U.S. Capitol, according to evidence presented Thursday night by the House committee investigating last year’s rampage.
Trump’s inaction over that 187-minute span — even in the face of desperate calls from top staff and close family — allowed the riot to escalate, investigators charged, threatening the lives of lawmakers and his own vice president, Mike Pence, who was at the Capitol on Jan. 6 to certify Joe Biden’s election victory.
That inactivity was no accident, in the panel’s telling, but just another part of Trump’s plan to weaponize the fury of his supporters — convinced by Trump himself that the election was “stolen” — in an effort to remain in power despite his election defeat.
“President Trump did not fail to act during the 187 minutes between leaving the Ellipse and telling the mob to go home,” said Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.). “He chose not to act.”
Thursday’s prime-time hearing — the eighth in six weeks — was an autopsy of those tense 187 minutes, from the moment Trump finished his rally speech at the White House Ellipse, where he encouraged supporters to “fight like hell” and march to the Capitol, until he released a video urging the rioters to go home.
The account of those hours portrayed a president fixated on the riot, which he was following closely on Fox News from the head of the table in the White House dining room, a witness testified. He would remain there for more than two-and-a-half hours, beginning at 1:25 p.m., the committee said, calling Republican lawmakers, to urge them to fight the election results, and his campaign lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, who was spearheading the “stop the steal” campaign.
The details of Trump’s actions during those hours are only now coming into focus, based on witness testimony, and the committee suggested the secrecy was by design.
The presidential daily diary contains no information from the period between 1:21 p.m. and 4:03 p.m.; the call log is empty for nearly 8 hours that day; and the White House photographer was prohibited from taking pictures of Trump, despite her efforts to do so.
Pat Cippollone, Trump’s former chief counsel, was squarely in the former group. He was among the few people to confront Trump in the dining room during the violence, and his message to the president, he testified, “was pretty clear.”
“There needed to be an immediate and forceful … public statement that people need to leave the Capitol now,” Cipollone said.
To boost its case, the committee brought in two former White House staffers who resigned in protest over how Trump handled Jan. 6: Matthew Pottinger, former deputy director for the National Security Council, and Sarah Matthews, then deputy press secretary. Both of them described being appalled by Trump’s refusal to act to protect the Capitol, and both of them would resign on Jan. 6 to protest what they called his failure to meet his most basic presidential obligations.
For Matthews, the final straw was the 4:17 p.m. Rose Garden video, in which Trump told the crowd to disperse, calling them “special people.” For Pottinger, the decision came even earlier, after Trump’s 2:24 p.m. tweet attacking Pence, who quickly became a target of the violent mob.
“That was the moment that I decided that I was going to resign, that that would be my last day at the White House,” Pottinger said.
“I simply didn’t want to be associated with the events that were unfolding on the Capitol.”
While staffers were making little headway with Trump, the panel demonstrated the fear felt at the Capitol.
Those protecting Pence feared for his life as well as their own, and, just 40 feet away from rioters, believed they may soon need to use deadly force.
“There was a lot of yelling. A lot of very personal calls over the radio, so it was disturbing. I don’t like talking about it, but there were calls to say goodbye to family members, so on, so forth,” an anonymous official said in audio played Thursday.
Post a Comment