Heather Cox Richardson's Blog, page 164
December 22, 2022
December 22, 2022
Already there are revelations from the documents being released this week.
Among the transcripts released by the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S Capitol is one from Cassidy Hutchinson, the former top aide to Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows. In it, Hutchinson tells the interviewers that what she calls “Trump world” set her up with her first attorney, Stefan Passantino. He refused to tell her who was paying the bills—it was Trump’s political action committee—and she worried that “they will ruin my life… if I do anything that they don’t want me to do.”
Emphasizing repeated references to “loyalty,” and “Trump world,” Hutchinson told the committee that Passantino urged her not to tell what she knew, prodding her to say she didn’t recall events she clearly did. “If you don’t 100 percent recall something, even if you don’t recall a date or somebody who may or may not have been in the room, that’s an entirely fine answer, and we want you to use that response as much as you deem necessary.” “Look,” he told her, “the goal with you is to get you in and out. Keep your answers short, sweet, and simple, seven words or less. The less the committee thinks you know, the better, the quicker it’s going to go. It’s going to be painless. And then you’re going to be taken care of.”
“We just want to focus on protecting the President,” Passantino said. “We’re gonna get you a really good job in Trump world. You don’t need to apply to other places. We’re gonna get you taken care of. We want to keep you in the family.” Hutchinson told of being scared of what they could do to her. “I’d seen how vicious they can be. And part of that’s politics, but…I think some of it is unique to Trump world, the level they’ll go to to tear somebody else down. And I was scared of that.”
Mark Meadows, too, sent Hutchinson a message through a mutual friend saying “he knows you’re loyal and he knows…you’re going to protect him and the boss. You know, he knows that we’re all on the same team and we’re a family.” She also received notice that Trump was aware of her testimony.
After two interviews with the committee, Hutchinson reached out to a former White House colleague, Alyssa Farah, to become a back channel to the January 6 committee to clear her conscience of testimony she felt was not fully truthful. In a third interview, committee members asked questions that clearly shocked Passantino, who kept asking how they knew what to ask. When, afterward, he insisted on talking both to New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman and his Trump world law partners against Hutchinson’s wishes, she realized that he was working for Trump, not her. When he suggested she should risk a charge of contempt of Congress, along with jail time, she cut ties with him and began working with new lawyers.
In her newer, clean testimony to the committee, Hutchinson recounted a number of conversations in which it was clear Trump knew he had lost the election, as well as some conversations that suggested the planning for January 6 was well underway weeks ahead of time. On December 12, for example, when Trump tried to cancel a trip to the Army-Navy game, Meadows told Hutchinson, “He can’t do that. He’s gonna tick off the military, and then he’s gonna be ticked off at me in a few weeks when the military’s ticked off at him….” Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) asked Hutchinson what she thought that exchange meant, and she answered: “Looking back now, I can speculate.”
The transcript is not just a damning portrait of the Trump loyalists, it is a window into the struggles of a clearly very bright young woman who was under enormous financial and emotional pressure to please her former boss and yet could not accept the erasure of her moral values. After two sessions with the committee in which she felt she had not been forthcoming, she realized she had to “pass the mirror test.”
She told the committee: “[Y]ou know, I did feel like it was my obligation and my duty to share [what she knew], because I think that if you’re given a position of public power, it’s also your job, your civic responsibility, to allow the people to make decisions for themselves. And if no one’s going to do that, like, somebody has to do it.”
There will no doubt be more information from the January 6 committee documents forthcoming. (The committee released its 845-page report a little before 10:00 Eastern time, but I will not have time to read it before posting this letter tonight.)
Hutchinson’s moral reckoning stands in stark contrast to a court filing yesterday that revealed Fox News Channel personality Sean Hannity pushed the idea on air that Trump had won the 2020 election even though, as he said under oath, “I did not believe it for one second.” Dominion Voting Systems has filed a $1.6 billion lawsuit against the Fox News Channel and its parent company, Fox Corporation, for defamation after its frequent declarations that voting systems rigged the election. Testimony like Hannity’s makes a strong case that the outlet knew it was lying when it pushed the story that Trump had won the election.
Other documents, released from the House Committee on Ways and Means concerning Trump’s taxes, suggest corruption was widespread under Trump. By law, the Internal Revenue Service must audit a president’s tax returns. It audited President Barack Obama’s taxes while he was in office and has audited President Joe Biden’s taxes as well during his term. But it did not audit former president Trump’s taxes for the first two years he was in office and finally began an audit on the same day the chair of the Ways and Means Committee, Representative Richard E. Neal (D-MA), asked for information about the returns.
Charlie Savage and Alan Rappeport of the New York Times reported that the IRS began to audit the tax returns Trump filed during his presidency only after he had already left office, and then assigned only one person to the job. But, Michael Schmidt of the New York Times reported earlier this year, Trump repeatedly talked about using the IRS to investigate his enemies, and the bureau did, in fact, launch invasive audits on former FBI director James B. Comey and his deputy, Andrew G. McCabe, both of whom Trump believed to be his enemies.
The numbers released show that Trump declared he lost money in 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2020, so that he paid no income tax, and that he paid a total of $1500 in federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017.
Senate Finance Committee chair Ron Wyden (D-OR) said there is “no justification for the failure to conduct the required presidential audits until a congressional inquiry was made.” He called for additional funding for the IRS, noting: “These are issues much bigger than Donald Trump. Trump’s returns likely look similar to those of many other wealthy tax cheats—hundreds of partnership interests, highly-questionable deductions, and debts that can be shifted around to wipe out tax liabilities.” He also said: “I have additional questions about the extent to which resource issues or fear of political retaliation from the White House contributed to lapses here.”
This afternoon the House passed a bill requiring the IRS to conduct annual audits of the president’s tax returns. Five Republicans joined the Democrats to vote in favor of the measure, but 201 Republicans voted against it.
For its part, the Senate this afternoon passed the $1.7 trillion omnibus bill to fund the government through next September 30. Among other measures in the bill, the Senate included a reform of the Electoral Count Act to make impossible another attempt to overturn a presidential election the way Trump tried. The bill clarifies that the vice president’s role in counting electoral votes is purely ceremonial, makes it clear that there is only one slate of electors per state, and increases the number of congress members required to launch an objection to a state’s electoral slate.
Today, the Democrats elected Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD) as the top Democratic member (the top member of the party out of power is called the “ranking member”) of the House Oversight Committee. This is an enormously significant election because the Republicans have already announced they plan to use their majority to investigate a wish list of targets, and many of those investigations will likely come from the Oversight committee.
Because Republican minority leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) has decided not to put together committees until after the election for speaker takes place on January 3, it is not clear what Republicans will be on that committee, but Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH) currently sits on it, and Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) has said she expects a seat on it. Jordan’s role for the Republicans in Congress is to shout and hector witnesses to establish a narrative (he is famously ineffective at passing legislation), while Greene’s role is to parrot right-wing conspiracies. Clearly, the Republicans plan to use the Oversight Committee largely for propaganda before the 2024 election.
This makes Raskin’s new position key: Raskin is a brilliant constitutional law professor who is cowed not even a little bit by the likes of Jordan and Greene. He tweeted: “I was recruited to [the Oversight Committee] by Representative Elijah Cummings on my first day in Congress & it is overwhelming to think I will now become one of his successors. I thank my Caucus colleagues for entrusting me with the awesome responsibility of being Oversight Ranking Member.”
—
Notes:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/13/us/politics/trump-irs-investigations.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/06/us/politics/comey-mccabe-irs-audits.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/21/us/politics/trump-irs-taxes.html
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/12/21/us/house-ways-and-means-trump-tax-report.html
https://www.democracydocket.com/opinion/it-is-time-to-reform-the-electoral-count-act/
https://raskin.house.gov/press-releases?ID=5815D12C-4BE5-41EE-9311-D76B97DA1803
@OversightDems by Representative Elijah Cummings on my first day in Congress & it is overwhelming to think I will now become one of his successors. I thank my Caucus colleagues for entrusting me with the awesome responsibility of being Oversight Ranking Member.","username":"RepRaskin","name":"Rep. Jamie Raskin","date":"Thu Dec 22 18:44:38 +0000 2022","photos":[],"quoted_tweet":{},"retweet_count":2689,"like_count":26745,"expanded_url":{},"video_url":null,"belowTheFold":true}">
Rep. Jamie Raskin @RepRaskinI was recruited to @OversightDems by Representative Elijah Cummings on my first day in Congress & it is overwhelming to think I will now become one of his successors. I thank my Caucus colleagues for entrusting me with the awesome responsibility of being Oversight Ranking Member.6:44 PM ∙ Dec 22, 202226,745Likes2,689Retweetshttps://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/21/business/media/sean-hannity-fox-trump-election.html
https://www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/u-s-senate-passes-electoral-count-reform-act/
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/21/trump-income-tax-returns-detailed-in-new-report-.html
December 21, 2022
December 21, 2022
Three hundred days ago, Russian president Vladimir Putin launched a new assault into Ukraine, where his troops had been fighting since 2014. Apparently, he expected that a new strike would bring a quick victory that would enable him to break away the eastern regions of Ukraine and annex them to Russia with a puppet government in place, expanding his territory and power.
Today, Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky—whose leadership of the Ukrainians, who have refused to yield and whose resistance has debilitated the Russian military, has made him an international hero—made his first trip outside Ukraine since the invasion began.
Flying on a U.S. government plane, Zelensky came to the White House to thank President Biden, Congress, and the American people for their support.
Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken were instrumental in convincing the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)—which former president Trump had quite deliberately weakened—to stand together against Russian aggression. Biden and Blinken pulled together allies around the globe to sanction Russia and Russian individuals and entities, making the Russian economy suffer increasingly as the war went on. And they have urged countries around the world to rush money and supplies to help Ukraine resist Russian aggression.
From the beginning, Biden and Blinken recognized that if Russia were permitted to crush the sovereignty of Ukraine and take its territory, the concept of an international rules-based order that has protected much of the world since World War II would have been abandoned. They also recognized that involving NATO directly in the war would have given Putin the stature he craved and would have led at the very least to an extensive ground war. The U.S. offered to evacuate Zelensky as Russian troops moved in.
“The fight is here. I need ammunition, not a ride,” Zelensky answered.
For ten months now, the Ukrainians first held their own, and then recovered significant territory from the invaders, even as Putin tried to claim Ukrainian lands as his own. The process of reclaiming their territory has been heartwrenching as it has become clear that Russian soldiers and their leaders engaged in murder, torture, rape, and other war crimes. Now, the Russians are targeting missile strikes at civilian infrastructure, knocking out heat and electricity in the bitter winter cold, hoping to inflict yet more suffering on Ukraine. And yet, the Ukrainians fight on.
In a time when democracy seemed to be on the ropes and authoritarians like Putin seemed to be gaining the upper hand, the Ukrainians came to stand for the power of democracy. They showed that Putin’s mighty army was hollowed out by corruption and apathy, while the Ukrainians, who were supposed to be weak, dropped their civilian lives to defend their country. They showed that Putin’s claim of moral superiority over secular democracies—which, he said, were a cesspool of decadence—was a sham: his mercenaries committed war crimes and boasted of it. As the western Allies had done during World War II, the Ukrainians demonstrated that democracy, for all its messiness, was far superior to authoritarianism.
Sadly, it has been a demonstration some Americans were not eager to see as they continue to believe that the willingness of secular democracies to welcome LGBTQI+ individuals and racial minorities as equals to white, straight Christians is undermining society.
Speaking in English today to make sure Americans got his message directly, Zelensky thanked Congress for the bipartisan support Ukraine has received, and the American people, who have invested significant tax dollars in the Ukrainians’ efforts. He conveyed “thanks from our just ordinary people to your ordinary people, Americans. I really appreciate. I think it’s very difficult to—to understand what does it mean when we say appreciate, but—but you really have—have to feel it. And thank you so much.”
Zelensky also came to ask for more aid, both military and humanitarian, to support Ukraine’s war effort. Congress has proposed $44 billion in aid in the new omnibus funding package, bringing the U.S. package so far to more than $100 billion in military and humanitarian aid over four spending packages. While a few right-wing Republicans are complaining about this spending, it is worth noting that the U.S. annual defense budget Congress passed earlier this month was $858 billion.
This evening, Zelensky spoke to a joint meeting of the Congress, where the members greeted him with a standing ovation (with the pointed exception of some right-wing House members). He described Ukraine’s defense as a battle between democracy and authoritarianism across the globe, and assured Americans, “Your money is not charity. It’s an investment in the global security and democracy that we handle in the most responsible way.”
“We defeated Russia in the battle for minds of the world,” he said. “We have no fear, nor should anyone in the world have it. Ukrainians gained this victory, and it gives us courage which inspires the entire world.
“Americans gained this victory, and that’s why you have succeeded in uniting the global community to protect freedom and international law. Europeans gained this victory, and that’s why Europe is now stronger and more independent than ever. The Russian tyranny has lost control over us. And it will never influence our minds again.
“Yet, we have to do whatever it takes to ensure that countries of the Global South also gain such victory. I know one more, I think very important, thing: The Russians will stand a chance to be free only when they defeat the Kremlin in their minds.”
At the end of his speech, Zelensky presented a signed Ukrainian flag from the recent battleground of Bakhmut, in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Vice President Kamala Harris, the president of the Senate, who were seated behind him. In a dramatic image, they held it up between them before giving Zelensky a U.S. flag that had flown over the U.S. Capitol today to mark his visit in exchange.
Putin lately seems desperate to make Russia look like a world power. Two days ago he was in Belarus, apparently trying to shore up his armies, and claims he is adding an additional 500,000 soldiers to those he says are already in the ranks. Today he exaggerated outlandishly at a meeting of Russia’s defense chiefs, saying that NATO countries are using their full military capabilities against Russia.
In contrast to Putin’s boasts and trip to Belarus, Zelensky traveled on a U.S. plane to meet with President Biden at the White House and give a speech to a joint session of Congress. His visit demonstrated that the U.S. will give Ukraine what Biden said is its "unequivocal and unbending support" for “as long as it takes.”
—
Notes:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/02/magazine/russiagate-paul-manafort-ukraine-war.html
https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/15/politics/defense-bill-ndaa/index.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/12/16/russia-200th-brigade-decimated-ukraine/
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/18/us/politics/defense-contractors-ukraine-russia.html
https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/26/europe/ukraine-zelensky-evacuation-intl/index.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/21/us/politics/zelensky-speech-transcript.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/20/us/politics/congress-aid-ukraine.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/19/world/europe/belarus-putin-kyiv.html
https://www.yahoo.com/now/putin-says-almost-nato-potential-150323061.html
December 20, 2022
December 20, 2022
There is some fallout from yesterday’s hearing of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol. Yesterday afternoon, after the committee had voted unanimously to refer former president Trump to the Department of Justice for breaking at least four laws, Representative Elise Stefanik (R-NY), the third-ranking Republican in the House of Representatives, made a statement. “House Democrats and Vicious Never Trumpers, who were run out of Congress by the American people, continue to desperately and unconstitutionally target President Trump & Republicans,” she said.
Stefanik blew up her reputation as a moderate to ride Trump’s coattails to power and now appears to think she has little choice but to back him to try to keep him from taking everyone down with him.
Also, sources have identified for CNN reporters Katelyn Polantz, Pamela Brown, Jamie Gangel, and Jeremy Herb the person to whom the committee referred as telling a witness to give misleading testimony. The person giving the advice was apparently Stefan Passantino, the top ethics lawyer for the Trump White House, and the person receiving it was top aide to Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows, Cassidy Hutchinson. By the time he was allegedly giving Hutchinson advice to protect Trump, Passantino was funded by Trump’s Save America political action committee.
Passantino denies the suggestion that he advised Hutchinson to mislead the committee, but he is on leave from the law firm where he was a partner, claiming that leave is because of “the distraction of this matter.” Los Angeles Times legal columnist Harry Litman tweeted that the accusation involving Passantino is “absolutely career ending if it pans out. Virtual instant [disbarment] and lucky if he stays out of jail.”
Finally, as the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol prepares to release its final report and close up shop, Punchbowl News today reported that the committee is also “extensively cooperating” with the Justice Department’s special counsel overseeing that investigation for the Department of Justice, Jack Smith. Smith requested all the committee’s materials on December 5. The committee began to send over materials last week.
Other continuing stories include the end of Title 42, the pandemic restriction on migrants’ right to apply for asylum in the U.S. After almost a year of litigation, a federal court ordered the rule lifted tomorrow. At the last minute, Republican attorneys general from 19 states sued to stop the lifting of the rule, and the Supreme Court issued an administrative stay.
In response, the administration today responded that it is not legitimate to use a health measure in place of immigration rules. It acknowledged that ending Title 42 orders “will likely lead to disruption and a temporary increase in unlawful border crossings,” and it “in no way seeks to minimize the seriousness of that problem.” But, the administration asserts, “[T]he solution to that immigration problem cannot be to extend indefinitely a public-health measure that all now acknowledge has outlived its public-health justification.” Instead, the country needs to rely on the immigration laws Congress has passed.
The administration has asked the court to deny the applicants’ attempt to keep Title 42 in place, but asks that if it does so that it give the government at least a few days notice, so it can prepare “for a full return” to normal operations.
Republicans have, of course, just killed a measure to increase funding and personnel at the border, and to extend restrictions until new facilities are built, at least in part because they are unwilling to extend a path to citizenship for “dreamers,” those folks brought to the U.S. by their parents as children. About 70% of Americans support a pathway to citizenship for dreamers.
In another continuing story, the House Republicans continue to snarl at one another. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) is now backing House minority leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and has turned on Representative Lauren Boebert (R-CO), who is siding with Representative Matt Gaetz (R-FL) against McCarthy. Boebert started things off by tweaking Greene about believing in “Jewish space lasers.” (You know, I started to explain this reference, but… I give up. For once I’m asking you just to take my word for it that it involves Greene.) Greene responded on Twitter, accusing Boebert of being in it for the money. The fight has devolved from there.
Meanwhile, CNN’s chief congressional correspondent, Manu Raju, reported today that Senator Kevin Cramer (R-ND) was unhappy with McCarthy’s threat to block bills from Senate Republicans if they back the omnibus funding bill to keep the government afloat. “Statements like that and statements coming from House Republicans is the very reason that some Senate Republicans feel they probably should spare them from the burden of having to govern.”
A profile of McCarthy by Jonathan Blitzer in the forthcoming New Yorker clearly lays out the Republicans’ problem. Blitzer quotes Sarah Longwell, a Republican strategist, as saying: “The Dems’ extreme people are extreme on progressive policies. The Republicans’ extreme are extreme on the level of the insane taking over the asylum.”
McCarthy has to cater to those folks to become House speaker because the party’s majority is so small, but party members who actually want to govern don’t want to be held hostage to the far right. Representative Don Bacon (R-NE) says he thinks McCarthy is the only serious candidate for speaker, but if he doesn’t have the votes, Bacon said, ““I’m going to work with like-minded people across the aisle to find someone agreeable” for speaker.”
And finally, it appears that a story that has continued now since 2015 is approaching a new ending. As a candidate for the U.S. presidency, Trump promised he would release his tax returns, as is common for presidential candidates. In fact, he has fought the release of those returns ever since. Under the leadership of Representative Richard Neal (D-MA), the House Committee on Ways and Means subpoenaed about six years of Trump’s tax returns in May 2019 as part of an attempt to make sure presidents’ taxes were adequately audited, but it was not until last month the committee received the returns.
Today the committee voted to make those returns public after blacking out personal information such as Social Security numbers, street addresses, and banking information. It will also make public the returns of eight Trump business entities, along with a report by the committee. The vote was 24 to 16, along party lines, with Republican Kevin Brady (R-TX) arguing strongly against the release.
Already there are questions. The Internal Revenue Service has a policy that the individual tax returns for the president and vice president are “subject to mandatory review,” but it did not audit Trump’s taxes for the first two years he was in office. It did so only after Neal and the Ways and Means committee requested the taxes in 2019. That audit is still not finished.
Ironically, the discovery that the IRS was not, in fact, doing its job with regard to Trump’s taxes proves what the House Ways and Means Committee argued all along: we need new legislation to ensure that the IRS makes timely examinations of presidential tax returns while disclosing certain information to the public.
—
Notes:
@WaysMeansCmte Chairman Richard Neal wrote the IRS to request Trump's tax returns as part of our Committee's oversight of the IRS' mandatory audit of presidential tax returns.\n\nOn the same day the IRS initiated its first audit of Donald Trump's tax returns. ","username":"RepDonBeyer","name":"Rep. Don Beyer","date":"Wed Dec 21 02:31:59 +0000 2022","photos":[{"img_url":"https://pbs.substack.com/media/Fkd8vG...
Rep. Don Beyer @RepDonBeyerOn April 3, 2019, @WaysMeansCmte Chairman Richard Neal wrote the IRS to request Trump's tax returns as part of our Committee's oversight of the IRS' mandatory audit of presidential tax returns.On the same day the IRS initiated its first audit of Donald Trump's tax returns. 
2:31 AM ∙ Dec 21, 2022239Likes124Retweetshttps://punchbowl.news/archive/punchbowl-news-special-edition-1220/
Ronald Brownstein @RonBrownsteinNew statement from Elise Stefanik: "House Democrats and Vicious Never Trumpers, who were run out of Congress by the American people, continue to desperately and unconstitutionally target President Trump & Republicans" Early sign of how GOP majority may bind party tighter to Trump9:09 PM ∙ Dec 19, 2022167Likes33Retweetshttps://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23472590-doj-response-on-title-42-lawsuit
Manu Raju @mkrajuSen. Kevin Cramer to me on McCarthy’s threat to block Senate R bills if they back omnibus. “Statements like that and statements coming from House Republicans is the very reason that some Senate Republicans feel they probably should spare them from the burden of having to govern.”11:29 PM ∙ Dec 20, 20223,685Likes672Retweetshttps://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/12/26/what-kevin-mccarthy-will-do-to-gain-power
Harry Litman @harrylitmanThe accusations involving Stefan Passantino--that he advised Cassidy Hutchinson to say she did not recall when in fact she did -- is absolutely career ending if it pans out. Virtual instant disarmament and lucky if he stays out of jail.11:35 PM ∙ Dec 20, 202210,812Likes1,881Retweetshttps://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/20/trump-tax-returns-house-committee-considers-release-.html
https://www.irs.gov/irm/part4/irm_04-008-004#idm139994953458320
https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/20/politics/trump-tax-summary-ways-and-means-committee/index.html
December 19, 2022
December 19, 2022
Today the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol held its final public hearing.
It reviewed the material establishing how former president Donald Trump planned even before the 2020 election to declare he had won even if he actually lost, and how he executed that plan. It then laid out how he maintained he had won even as his own lawyers and campaign advisors repeatedly assured him that the conspiracy theories on which he was relying were false. It showed how he contested Democratic candidate Joe Biden’s victories in court—losing 61 times—and then pressured state governments to “find” the votes he needed to win.
When those attempts to hand him the election all failed, he turned to trying to steal the election through pressuring state officials to create false slates of electors that chose him, rather than Biden, and then pressured the Department of Justice to get states to turn to those electors by alleging—falsely—that the department thought the election was fraudulent (its leaders had said repeatedly, in no uncertain terms, that the election was not fraudulent). When Justice Department leaders refused, he tried to put a loyalist, Jeffrey Clark, at the head of the department to do as he wished. He was stopped only when the department leaders threatened to resign as a group.
That left him with a plan hatched by right-wing lawyer John Eastman. The plan hinged on the outrageous idea that the vice president, in his capacity as the person to oversee the counting of electoral ballots, could decide not to count the legitimate ballots for which Trump loyalists had submitted competing ballots, enabling him single-handedly to throw the election to Trump over the wishes of the American voters.
Eastman himself admitted this plan was illegal.
And yet it was Trump’s last hope to look like he was playing by the rules. When Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence, refused to participate in the scheme, Trump went to his final card—his trump card, if you’ll forgive me—his base.
Exactly two years ago today, on December 19, 2020, when it became clear that his campaign lawyers had lost their legal challenges and the real electors had filed their electoral slates, Trump tweeted to his supporters to urge them to come to Washington, D.C., on January 6, the day those electoral votes would be counted and confirm Biden’s election to the White House. Falsely claiming what he knew to be untrue, that it was statistically impossible for him to have lost the election, he told his supporters: “Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild.”
The right-wing militias he had courted since the Charlottesville, Virginia, Unite the Right rally of August 2017 heard the message. Immediately, they interpreted his tweet as an order to come to Washington to keep him in office, with violence if necessary, and they planned accordingly. Trump appears to have seen their potential violence as a final way to force Pence to do as he wished. When the vice president continued to refuse, Trump whipped up the crowd against his vice president and sent them toward the Capitol, where both houses of Congress and the vice president were all, in an exceedingly rare occurrence, together.
For 187 minutes, as his supporters stormed the Capitol, Trump watched the chaos on television and did nothing to stop it, communicating only with those continuing to try to stop the counting of the electoral votes. Only when troops had been mobilized and it was clear the insurrection would not succeed did he tell his people that he loved them and they should go home. They promptly did, underscoring that he could have called them off whenever he wished.
He expressed no concern for those under siege that day, and he did nothing to stop the rioters.
After outlining the former president’s attempt to stay in power against the wishes of the American people, overturning the very foundation of our democracy, the committee members voted to refer Trump to the Department of Justice for criminal prosecution for violating at least four laws:
The first law the committee says Trump broke was that he obstructed an official proceeding. Trump tried corruptly to stop the joint session of Congress counting electoral votes in a bunch of different ways, from gathering false electors, to trying to send a letter to state legislators from the Department of Justice lying that the department thought the election was suspect, to spurring on a mob. Under this charge, the committee also referred lawyer John Eastman “and certain other Trump associates.”
It noted that “multiple Republican Members of Congress, including Representative Scott Perry, likely have material facts regarding President Trump’s plans to overturn the election. For example, many Members of Congress attended a White House meeting on December 21, 2020, in which the plan to have the Vice President affect the outcome of the election was disclosed and discussed. Evidence indicates that certain of those Members unsuccessfully sought Presidential pardons from President Trump after January 6th…revealing their own clear consciousness of guilt.”
The second law Trump broke was conspiring to defraud the United States, in this case by stealing the election. Other conspirators the committee suggests the department should look at include Trump lawyers Kenneth Chesebro and Rudolph Giuliani, and Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows.
The third was conspiracy to make a false statement, which the committee said described the false elector scheme. This conspiracy, too, might involve others, including Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel, who agreed to help Trump with the project.
The fourth law the committee says Trump broke was that he “Incited,” “Assisted,” or provided “Aid and Comfort” to an insurrection.
The committee suggested that this list was not exhaustive and that there might be other laws the former president has broken. Those included obstruction of justice, as the committee revealed that some of its witnesses suggested Trump loyalists had attempted to affect their testimony. The referrals create no legal obligation for the Justice Department to act but, along with the evidence the committee has compiled, will make it important for the department to explain why it disagrees that crimes have been committed if it decides not to charge the former president.
The committee also referred four members of the House to the House Ethics Committee for ignoring the committee’s subpoenas: Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), Jim Jordan (R-OH), Scott Perry (R-PA), and Andy Biggs (R-AZ). The incoming Republican House will likely ignore this referral, but that will make it hard for its members to enforce subpoenas themselves.
Along with the hearing, the committee released an introduction to its forthcoming report. At only 104 pages, the report is worth reading: it’s very clear and very fast paced, reading more like a 1940s thriller than a government report. And like an old-time novel, it has in it some eye-popping facts just waiting for more development.
Trump raised “raised roughly one quarter of a billion dollars…between the election and January 6th” by falsely claiming election fraud. The “Trump Campaign, along with the Republican National Committee, sent millions of emails to their supporters, with messaging claiming that the election was ‘rigged,’ that their donations could stop Democrats from ‘trying to steal the election,’ and that Vice President Biden would be an ‘illegitimate president’ if he took office.” That’s a lot of money raised fraudulently, and the RNC was involved. The RNC shows up again when chair McDaniel agrees to help Trump with the fake elector scheme.
The committee establishes that Trump fully intended to go with his supporters to the Capitol. This is a very big deal indeed: the president traditionally cannot go to the chambers of Congress without a formal invitation. Trump confidant Rudy Giuliani told Cassidy Hutchinson, top aide to Mark Meadows, that Trump intended to be with the members of Congress and to “look powerful.” A White House security official said, “[W]e were all in a state of shock…we all knew what that implicated and what that meant, that this was no longer a rally, that this was going to move to something else…. I—I don’t know if you want to use the word “insurrection,” “coup,” whatever.”
The committee generously attributes this plan to be part of Trump’s hope to pressure Pence, but historian of authoritarians Ruth Ben-Ghiat noted that a leader launching a new regime needs to be present at the front of his cheering troops to mark his success.
Fittingly, on December 15, the Coup d’État Project of theCline Center for Advanced Social Research at the University of Illinois, which maintains the world’s largest registry of coups, attempted coups, and coup conspiracies since World War II, reclassified the events of January 6 as an attempted “auto-coup.” According to its director, Scott Althaus, an auto-coup occurs when “the incumbent chief executive uses illegal or extra-legal means to assume extraordinary powers, seize the power of other branches of government, or render powerless other components of the government such as the legislature or judiciary.”
—
Notes:
Ron Filipkowski 🇺🇦 @RonFilipkowskiTrump’s “be there, it will be wild” tweet from Dec 19. 
11:48 AM ∙ Jan 7, 2021236Likes97Retweetshttps://www.businessinsider.com/trumps-presence-capitol-riot-key-successful-coup-expert-says-2022-6
https://clinecenter.illinois.edu/coup-detat-project/statement_dec.15.2022
Heather Cox Richardson's Blog
- Heather Cox Richardson's profile
- 1300 followers
