Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The revolution will be supervised.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

Infrastructure week. at last.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

“More of this”, i said to the dog.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

Everybody saw this coming.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

You are here: Home / Jan 6: Hearings / “Good” Lawyers? There Was Only One of Those, As Far As I Can Tell

“Good” Lawyers? There Was Only One of Those, As Far As I Can Tell

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Jennifer Rubin: Even the ‘good’ lawyers didn’t blow the whistle on Trump. That was wrong.

As far as I can tell, there was only one good lawyer, and that was Eric Herschmann.  We saw a preview from him at the end of the hearing on Monday, but we see more in this video.  The short video begins with Liz Cheney and then we hear from Eric Herschmann himself.

Was it Bill Stepien who said he was happy to be on “Team Something-or-Other”?  (“Team Normal”)  As if he was one of the good guys?  No one who hid what Trump was doing was a good guy, and no attorney who participated, was complicit, or was just silent was a good guu.

Excerpt from Jennifer Rubin’s article linked above.

Some attorneys in the Trump administration, and serving as lawmakers in Congress, enabled egregious and perhaps criminal conduct after the 2020 election. Others prevented former president Donald Trump from acting even worse than he did, or at least refused to assist him. But none of them alerted the FBI, the public or congressional leadership. That’s a serious failing.

Some lawyers’ conduct was reprehensible. Testimony collected by the House Jan. 6 committee shows that Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, who lost his law license for filing utterly frivolous cases, promoted a coup over other advisers’ objections. News reports disclosed that former assistant attorney general Jeffrey Clark had prepared a draft letter to state officials making a false claim of widespread fraud and soliciting alternative slates of electors. And, worst of all, right-wing attorney John Eastman cooked up an infamous plot to stop the electoral vote count and deny the legitimate winner, Joe Biden, the ability to take office.

Many House members who are lawyers similarly signed onto an amicus brief in a frivolous case, initiated by lawyer and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, to challenge the results of certain states that President Biden won. In the Senate, Republicans with Ivy League law degrees, such as Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) and Josh Hawley (Mo.), spread the “big lie” and made groundless objections to prevent the orderly counting of the electoral votes. These actions exploited the Trump base’s delusion and put democracy at risk.

All of this conduct is unacceptable for anyone who has taken an oath of office, let alone a lawyer who has obligations as an “officer of the court.” Claims to sanction some of these characters have been filed. Clark and Giuliani, for example, could have criminal liability (the crime-fraud exception does not allow them to hide behind attorney-client privilege) if the facts are sufficient to prove they committed conspiracy to defraud the United States or conspiracy to disrupt an official proceeding of Congress.

More at the link.

I still don’t buy that today’s hearing was postponed for the reason they said.  I think that either some new information came to their attention or that they decided to pivot for some reason after the two excellent hearings we have already had.

Reader Interactions

103Comments

  5. 5.

    JPL

    Rep Loudermilk’s tour was said to be ordinary by the Capitol Police.   I guess they didn’t watch the film because the Jan. 6th committee just released this  video

  8. 8.

    Tarragon

    I have nothing substantial to say about this so I’ll point of the trivial. Herschmann’s background is amazing:

    • metal “lego” hair
    • panda art
    • A bat labeled justice
  11. 11.

    WaterGirl

    @JPL: I have never heard of Loudermilk, but that sure wasn’t subtle.  And it’s not like they were taking pictures of anything scenic or beautiful or anything one might want to remember from a trip to the Capitol.

    edit:  Now I want the video of Boebert taking people around on tour.

  12. 12.

    TaMara

    This seems important. Hope Loudermilk has a good criminal lawyer

  14. 14.

    UncleEbeneezer

    I mean, don’t we all bring sharpened spear-head flags and make threats of violence with us when we are in “tourist” mode…

  20. 20.

    JPL

    I just looked up his district and it covers Cherokee County and part of Bartow and Cobb.   I probably know people who voted for him, because the Cobb line abuts my district.

    ugh

  23. 23.

    TaMara

    @JPL: Very suspicious…I have to agree with southpaw here:

    southpaw
    @nycsouthpaw
    The continued unreliability of the leadership of the Capitol Police presents a challenge, imo, to the pat, uncomplicated version of 1/6 that a lot of people have been striving to establish on television.
  25. 25.

    JPL

    @debbie: Initially he said he didn’t, then he did to a family, then he did to a few others.   The number kept changing.  DOJ hopefully is looking into him.

    Why did Capitol Police say the tour was normal?

  27. 27.

    JPL

    @WaterGirl: From the AJC

    Capitol Police Chief J. Thomas Manger signed a letter outlining his agency’s review of security footage from that day after conducting an investigation requested by U.S. Rep. Rodney Davis, the ranking Republican member of the House Administration Committee. Davis’ request was filed after the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot asked Loudermilk for information about the tour.

    The two congressmen both criticized the committee’s request. Loudermilk has called the committee’s investigation a “political circus,” and he faulted the panel’s members for releasing its letter to the public before he had received it.

    He and Davis both said the tour in question was innocent. Manger’s letter appears to confirm that.

  28. 28.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @JPL: Police often lie reflexively to protect people in power, so there’s always that possibility.  Or perhaps someone at the Capitol Police let him give that tour as a favor and are covering their own asses.

    I’m curious if Loudermilk is one of the Congresspeople who requested a pardon…

  29. 29.

    Immanentize

    @JPL:

    Why did Capitol Police say the tour was normal?

    This is a very good question. And exactly who at the Capitol police dept said that? It came out just like the pro-Jared piece in the NYTimes, the day before actual information was released. The J6 Cmmt shut that lie down FAST!

  30. 30.

    debbie

    @Immanentize:

    Stepien told the panel that “two groups” emerged after the election, characterizing them as “my team and Rudy’s team.”

    “I didn’t mind being characterized as being part of team normal, as reporters, you know, kind of started to do around that point in time,” he said in the clip.

    Whether or not he actually was is different.

  32. 32.

    Elizabelle

    Skimmed Loudermilk’s Wiki entry.

    If you wanted to construct someone for the purpose of “trolling the Libs” it’s there.

    Represents what sort of used to be Bob Barr’s district (northern suburbs of Atlanta; Marietta, Acworth, Smyrna, etc.). And, with the GOP’s disastrous trajectory, Barr is now looking like one of the good ones.  Or at least, reasonable  And I did not like Barr!  (Will not forgive him for leading the push to name Washington National Airport for Reagan — enough — change the airport name back!)

    I hope Loudermilk ends up in a world of hurt, and is banned from further “public service.”

    He’s an Air Force vet.  And a bible thumper.  Too many of those.

  40. 40.

    Mike in NC

    The single thing that Donald Trump learned from his criminal father and mentor Roy Cohn was to surround himself with an army of crooked lawyers who could gum up any lawsuit against filed against him.

  42. 42.

    NotMax

    I still don’t buy that today’s hearing was postponed for the reason they said.

    “There’s a Mr. Occam on line one.”

    Absent evidence to the contrary, am perfectly willing to accept the select committee is not engaging in concealment or prevarication by way of explanation.

  45. 45.

    JPL

    @Immanentize: When I saw the article in the AJC, it surprised me since Loudermilk has changed his story numerous times.  Good for the committee to call bullshit on that.

  46. 46.

    H.E.Wolf

    @Tarragon: ​
      “A bat labeled justice”

    Reminded me of a Penang lawyer – an archaic term for a specific type of walking stick with a heavy head (suitable for bashing).

    In both cases, the unfunny “joke” is that someone is taking the law violently into their own hands.

  49. 49.

    Old School

    @debbie:

    He says he never gave a tour, but there he is on the surveillance tape????

    I believe it was an oddly specific denial.  He said he never gave a tour of the Capitol and the video shows the tour going through adjacent buildings, but not the Capitol itself.

  50. 50.

    Old School

    @brendancalling:

    I woke up late—why was the hearing postponed?

    It was postponed yesterday.  As I recall, the official reason was that the staff was having trouble editing the videos quickly enough to have it done for today.

  52. 52.

    NotMax

    OT.

    Now that’s funny.

    Scene on the TV just now with someone imitating talking into a walkie-talkie, ending with him mimicking the static burst of switching off the transmit button.

    Closed captioning : “Kzzt.”

    :)

  53. 53.

    debbie

    @Old School:

    I’m not familiar enough with the buildings to know where he was and what the purpose of documenting that section would be.

    Meanwhile, what about the DNC/RNC pipe bomber?

  55. 55.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Elizabelle: Will not forgive him for leading the push to name Washington National Airport for Reagan — enough — change the airport name back!

    I first flew into National Airport in 1958, and I still refuse to call it anything else. They should indeed change the name back, but in the meantime I will continue to refer to the airport by its previous name.

  56. 56.

    Geminid

    @Immanentize: Hice can now join Doug Collins on the ex-congressman preacher circuit. There’s probably good money there, what with the ability of congregations and their leadership to pay plump “honorariums” to guest preachers. Hice and Collins also will appear at the conferences that political evangelicals like to put on.

  57. 57.

    Immanentize

    @debbie: I know I saw a map of where the tour went yesterday on Twitter? But I can’t find it now. If I find it, I’ll link it.

  58. 58.

    JPL

    Other representative who didn’t give tours are watching the video and saying, holy shit.

  60. 60.

    raven

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    In its original request to Loudermilk on May 19, the committee asked that the Republican from Cassville voluntarily agree to a meeting to discuss the tour and its participants.

    Loudermilk’s office said Tuesday that he never responded to the committee’s request because he never received a copy directly. But at the time it was released, he said the tour in question was aboveboard.
    “A constituent family with young children meeting with their Member of Congress in the House Office Buildings is not a suspicious group or ‘reconnaissance tour,’ ” he and Davis wrote in a joint response.
    Manger’s letter said that review of the surveillance footage showed a group of 12 people entering the House building where Loudermilk’s office is located. Eventually the group grew to 15 people, and a congressional staffer met them at the entrance and walked with them toward Loudermilk’s suite.

    The cameras later caught Loudermilk with the group visiting an exhibit located in an adjacent office building. Loudermilk then left the tour and it continued on in the adjacent building, the letter said. At no time did the group enter the tunnel area that would have led to them to the main Capitol building.

  61. 61.

    Betty Cracker

    @raven: I heard speculation on a podcast that Hice’s first name, Jody, which is far more common for women than men, may have cost him the sexist asshole vote and thus the election. I have no idea how close the race was or if that theory is plausible, but I like the idea. :)

  62. 62.

    NotMax

    ‘@raven

    Maybe misremembering but isn’t he the one who had a local hate radio platform prior to election to Congress?

  63. 63.

    raven

    @Betty Cracker: Nah

     

    https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/05/brad-raffensperger-defeats-jody-hice-donald-trump-georgia-coup.html

     

    On Tuesday, Raffensperger likely won in part because of cross-over votes from Democrats who wanted to stick it to Trump. (Georgia has open primaries in which every voter can choose whether to participate in the Democratic or Republican contests.) That doesn’t discount, though, the success he achieved among Republican voters. Raffensperger was a fierce advocate for the GOP’s latest voter suppression measures in the state, promising to crack down on supposed fraud and illegal voting, even as he acknowledged the 2020 election had been clean. As Sam Levine reported earlier this month in the Guardian, there were clearly a significant number of GOP voters who professed to believe the vote count in 2020 had been corrupt, but still supported the man who ran that count and maintained a typical conservative position on other voting rights questions. “I felt that under all that pressure, he did a good job,” one voter told Levine. “I know it upset Trump, and I’m a Trump person, but fair is fair.”
    It’s worth emphasizing, meanwhile, the extent to which Hice would have truly been disastrous for the 2024 election. “He could say he would not report any official totals and urge the Legislature to appoint its own slate of electors,” election expert and Slate contributor Richard Hasen told me of how Hice could have meddled in 2024 had he won. Indeed, Hice has said that he would not have certified Joe Biden’s victory in 2020 had he been in charge of the state’s election at the time. Had that happened, the Georgia state Legislature would have likely given the race to Trump, and the president would have just needed to corrupt two more close outcomes among Republican-controlled state legislatures. This was in fact his last-ditch planto overturn the election, but it did not succeed because someone like Raffensperger—a conservative Republican!—was in charge instead of someone like Hice.

  65. 65.

    Brachiator

    Many House members who are lawyers similarly signed onto an amicus brief in a frivolous case, initiated by lawyer and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, to challenge the results of certain states that President Biden won. In the Senate, Republicans with Ivy League law degrees, such as Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) and Josh Hawley (Mo.), spread the “big lie” and made groundless objections to prevent the orderly counting of the electoral votes. These actions exploited the Trump base’s delusion and put democracy at risk.

    I forget. How many of Nixon’s gang were attorneys?  This article is great, and underscores that democracy is still at risk.

  66. 66.

    narya

    Personally, I think they delayed in part because of the possibility of the drop of a SCOTUS big opinion; didn’t want to be overshadowed. Assembling video likely a piece of it, too. But Zoe Lofgrin last night was clearly holding something back when Chris Hayes pressed her a bit, and it could be the SCOTUS thing, but also new evidence of some kind.

  67. 67.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Loudermilk is a co-conspirator with the insurrectionists. At the very least, he should be expelled from Congress (he won’t be, the Dems will not have a 1974 style supermajority in the House after the midterms). He should be prosecuted for being part of the conspiracy, though.

  68. 68.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @raven: All votes by blahs are by definition fraudulent in racist GQp eyes.  Dammit, they should actually be totin’ bales of cotton, not votin’.

  71. 71.

    Geminid

    @Betty Cracker: Another factor in Hice’s loss may have been that Raffensperger energetically reached out to Georgia Republicans, both local party officials and regular voters. The Washington Post had a long article about him a few weeks before the election. It followed Raffensperger on one of the many trips he took across Georgia meeting people, sometimes just five or six over coffee.

  73. 73.

    zhena gogolia

    When I look at that video of the “tour,” I keep thinking of how once in the Soviet Union someone on our college trip leaned out of the van to take a picture of a mural of Lenin, and his camera was snatched out of his hands by a guy standing on the corner. The mural was on the wall of a factory, and you weren’t allowed to take pictures of factories, or of a lot of other sites. He gave back the camera, but only after exposing all the film. There needed to be somebody like him standing there to grab everybody’s cell phones and smash them against the marble walls.

  74. 74.

    ian

    @raven: 
    One thing I remember reading about the Georgia Primaries is that GA-14 re-elected both Raffensperger and Greene by wide margins. Some level of support may have been Dem crossovers, but it is hard to imagine those same Dem crossovers voting for MTG. So there exists a large number of Republicans who can both vote for the crazy and vote for the (relatively) sane candidate in two different elections.

  75. 75.

    Steeplejack

    Re Loudermilk’s “normal” tour: I seem to remember there weren’t supposed to be any tours at that time, normal or not, because of COVID restrictions.

  78. 78.

    NotMax

    Meanwhile, nutbar wins GOP primary for Secretary of State in Nevada.

    A former state lawmaker who has been repeating the false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from former President Donald Trump won the Republican nomination today for Nevada secretary of state, the office that oversees elections in the perennial presidential battleground.

    In November, Jim Marchant will face Cisco Aguilar, a lawyer and former chair of the Nevada Athletic Commission who was unopposed in the Democratic primary. Term limits prevented Nevada’s current secretary of state, a Republican, from seeking reelection.

    Since losing a 2020 congressional bid, Marchant has appeared at various events around the country with allies of Trump to cast doubt on the last election. That includes MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, who has sought to prove voting machines were somehow manipulated. Source

  80. 80.

    Steeplejack

    @JPL:

    Why would the Capitol Police say it was a normal tour?

    Srsly. After everything that has come out, I think it would be okay for someone, just once, to lean on the other side of the argument. “You know, come to think of it, it does look sketchy as hell.”

  82. 82.

    lowtechcyclist

    @zhena gogolia: A similar thing happened to me on one of the trips to Russia to adopt my son, back when Russian adoptions were still a thing.  On the airside, the Samara airport had lit-up letters spelling out the city’s name in both Roman and Cyrillic letters.  I stopped to take a pic of the signs, and was immediately taken aside and made to delete the offending photo.

  84. 84.

    Elizabelle

    @Immanentize: 

    I can’t stand Peter Baker. He and wifey, Susan B. Glasser of The New Yorker, were enormous proponents of the “Biden is such a disaster — he fucked up the Afghanistan withdrawal.”

    Fuck them both. Also hated how Brian Williams could not fawn over Baker (or any of the other reporter cool kids) enough.

    Here is wifey’s tweet, August 2021, when they were setting the Biden is a fake and disaster narrative:

    President Biden pivots to empathy. After days oddly without expressing it for the Afghans and Americans undergoing this crisis.

  86. 86.

    Baud

    @JPL: 

    Why did Capitol Police say the tour was normal?

    I read the letter someone linked to above. I didn’t see anything that characterized the tour.

  87. 87.

    gvg

    @Immanentize: I read the story and did not get the impression at all that it was rehabilitating Jared. It seemed to me to be pretty damming though using non hyperbolic language.  Sometimes I think it is now habitual here to assume the NYT’s is always terrible.

  89. 89.

    Ruckus

    Just because some people take an oath to do something does not mean they will actually do that thing.

    Cops take an oath – how many of them seem to look for ways of not following that oath?

    Politicians take an oath – how many of them seem to look for ways of not following that oath?

    Why should lawyers be any different? People are people, they lie, they steal, they cheat, they hate, they screw, they abuse their power like anyone might do. We don’t have all that good of a guidance system, even as many of us do. And even then we make mistakes without thinking – and with thinking. And we ask, or don’t ask that question that gives us the internal permission to do things we’ve been told are wrong – what’s in it for me.

  90. 90.

    Geminid

    @ian: At least in Virginia, there is rift between what I call a Chamber of Commerce, establishment wing and the radical wing which is basically an alliance of politicized evangelicals and tea party cranks. This is probably the case in Georgia, which has a lot on common with Virginia in economic and demographic trends. Kemp’s and Raffensperger’s wins may be evidence that the establishment has the upper hand for now.

    They need to get the radicals back on their side, though, because Republicans cannot afford substantial defections, either by radicals staying home or by them coming out but leaving the Governor or Secretary of State lines blank.

  92. 92.

    Jinchi

    @TaMara: 

    Is there evidence that the people on Loudermilk’s tour are tied to anyone who breached the capitol on Jan 6th.

  93. 93.

    Ken

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:  It would be normal for tourists to take pics during a tour, but not of the things these people are photographing

    Maybe they were a hobby group for people interested in ductwork? Also emergency lighting and security doors.

  95. 95.

    Soprano2

    @Old School: I would question why anyone would want to see that without seeing the Capitol. I’ve taken a Capitol tour; those hallways are mostly boring doors and name plaques.

  97. 97.

    burnspbesq

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    He should be prosecuted for being part of the conspiracy, though.

    Better be prepared to prove by other means that he was in on the plan. An overt act, by itself, won’t be enough to convict.

  99. 99.

    Gravenstone

    @WaterGirl: Can’t find them at present, but saw a couple pics of what appears to be a blonde Boebert  from a few years back, paired with allegations she has a past as an escort. Apparently the group that helped kneecap Cawthorne has now set its sights on Klannie Oakley. More power to them.

  101. 101.

    TriassicSands

    @Elizabelle: 
    He’s an Air Force vet. And a bible thumper. Too many of those.

    The ultra-right wing Christian nationalism at the Air Force Academy has been well-documented. There-s no reason to assume it hasn’t infected a much wider AF population.

  102. 102.

    caphilldcne

    @JPL:  it’s absolutely not normal for an actual representative to do a tour of the Capitol. They are done by interns. I’ve worked as an advocate/lobbyist for nearly 30 years and maybe there have been a very few Members who have given tours to extremely high level donors but this is not normal and it is unheard of during the pandemic.

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