Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

I know this must be bad for Joe Biden, I just don’t know how.

Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

I’m pretty sure there’s only one Jack Smith.

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

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

Come on, man.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

You are here: Home / Jan 6: Insurrection / Witness Tampering (Open Thread)

Witness Tampering (Open Thread)

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This was an amazing moment:

Someone in the thread downstairs said they’re tired of hearing Democrats lionize Republicans for basic shit like doing their constitutionally mandated jobs. I get that, and I don’t intend to lionize Cheney, whose views are uniformly appalling on every other topic except the Trump crime spree.

But I will note that Cheney is kind of a badass. She seems to have personally shamed Patsy Baloney into showing up by noting after Hutchinson’s testimony that if a 25-year-old assistant had the guts to testify, the White House counsel should have the fortitude to appear.

And now she just informed Trump that the committee referred his attempt to tamper with a witness to the DOJ. Maybe it’s hereditary. Cheneys can not only shoot you in the face but get you to apologize for being in front of their gun. I wouldn’t want to fuck with one.

Open thread.

PS: Who do y’all think is the witness Trump tried to contact? Meadows didn’t deign to personally call Hutchinson — he tried to get to her through an intermediary. Trump directly tried to call this mystery person, so that’s…interesting.

Reader Interactions

188Comments

  3. 3.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    And now she just informed Trump that the committee referred his attempt to tamper with a witness to the DOJ. Maybe it’s hereditary. Cheneys can not only shoot you in the face but get you to apologize for being in front of their gun. I wouldn’t want to fuck with one.

    I think she’s as much her mother’s daughter as her father’s. After all, we don’t know that Lynne never shot anybody in the face, we just know that if she did, nobody ever heard about it. Cause she’s not sloppy.

  4. 4.

    Medicine Man

    Psshh. It is only natural to admire Cheney for metaphorically stabbing these bastards in the gut, given how much we wish more of the Dem politicians had the same instinct.

  7. 7.

    Ken

    Although it would be completely in character for Trump to rage-call someone after watching their testimony, it might not be a witness we’ve seen yet. So this is trickier than it might seem.

  10. 10.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Someone in the thread downstairs said they’re tired of hearing Democrats lionize Republicans for basic shit like doing their constitutionally mandated jobs.

    I took that comment to be directed at some praise of Mike Pence, that I missed. I don’t know if it was part of the testimony or some cable TV talking head. Neal Katyal made a sarcastic reference to Pence getting the Medal of Freedom, and it sounded like he was referring back to what someone else had said.

  14. 14.

    dmsilev

    I guess Trump is starting to learn the limits of his mob-boss approach to loyalty. When your former minions don’t fear you any more, they have no reason to keep their mouths shut about anything.

  15. 15.

    JoyceH

    Couple real intriguing items today – one is that Steve Bannon’s prediction that ‘all hell is going to break loose tomorrow’ was shortly after he’d had a phone conversation with Trump himself. The other is that the rally organizers knew in advance that Trump was going to call for a march on the Capitol, when neither the Secret Service nor his close staff knew that.

  16. 16.

    Betty Cracker

    @Ken: Right, and Cheney said the attempt was made AFTER the last hearing, so that’s probably where we should look for clues. Hmmm. Maybe the limo driver or someone like that?

    BTW, someone on Twitter zeroed in on the clip the committee played during Hutchinson’s testimony of the Chevy SUV that ferried Trump to the White House after the ellipse rally and gave it the full Zapruder treatment. You can sort of see Trump’s silhouette bouncing around angrily…

  18. 18.

    rikyrah

    of course he tried to witness tamper.

     

    nobody is actually surprised, are they?

     

    All I wanted was some dots to be connected…and that happened…

    the actual naming of names is FABULOUS

  20. 20.

    Alison Rose

    I wasn’t able to watch any of the hearings today because of my stupid job (I don’t just mean that because it kept me from watching, I hate it, someone hire me for remote work that doesn’t involve the phone, please kthx), but I’ve been trying to catch up on the important bits. But that clip from Cheney above is…wow. I’m not surprised, but I’m still disgusted. And honestly at this point, as far as punishment for Trump, can we just let Liz be in a room alone with him for half an hour? Tie him to a chair and give her whatever tools she would like.

  21. 21.

    Hoodie

    Cheney is turning out to be an enigmatic figure. It’s clear she really wants to dump this on Trump who, of course, deserves it. However, she’s obviously a fairly sophisticated mind, so I wonder if she ever thinks about what made her party particularly vulnerable to Trumpism, i.e., what made Trump identify the GOP as such easy marks. After all, Trump had previously been sniffing around the edges of the Democratic Party, but his target appeared to change after Obama got elected. The kind of demagoguery Trump engages in is just a few steps removed from that of some GOP predecessors, such as Palin and Darth Cheney himself. It might be fascinating to talk with Liz Cheney off the record if you could get her to be honest.

  22. 22.

    Old School

    Not a lawyer, but if the witness hasn’t appeared yet, wouldn’t Trump have an argument that he wasn’t trying to influence testimony?  Not sure if the mystery person is known to have spoken to the committee.

  23. 23.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Betty Cracker:

    Right, and Cheney said the attempt was made AFTER the last hearing, so that’s probably where we should look for clues. Hmmm. Maybe the limo driver or someone like that?

    Interesting. trump is said to have a close relationship with the two Secret Service agents involved, and a lot of people said the committee wouldn’t have made that story so prominent if they didn’t have some back-up

    interesting to me that it’s someone trump thought he could safely reach out to, and that person (it sounds like) pretty immediately sent their lawyer right to the committee.

  24. 24.

    MP

    @Baud: Seems like a lot of well-deserving folks are just getting buried by the onslaught of testimony coming out of these hearings.

  25. 25.

    Kropacetic

    @Baud: A claim from the right wing puke funnel, I always rated that “unlikely.”

    It’s not about the truth of the claims. All the right wing voters needed was to hear that it would happen and thus it became reality.

  26. 26.

    HumboldtBlue

    @Baud: ​ 

    Didn’t they sit straight back down after Hutchinson’s recounting of what she was told was corroborated by the Secret Service?

  30. 30.

    zhena gogolia

    Lynne Cheney anecdote. At the time when she was head of the NEH, my collaborator and I made an application to them for a grant to support a book. We got the grant. Normally you would receive the readers’ reports in full, including both praise and criticism. This was in the pre-digital age. What we received were little strips of paper. The minion who replied to us had cut out and sent to us only the negative parts of the reports, “because praise is not helpful.” I never experienced anything like it before or since, and rightly or wrongly, I blamed Lynne.

  31. 31.

    Baud

    Surely there are medals below the Medal of Freedom that we can give Pence. Maybe a Medal of Adequacy.

  32. 32.

    Kropacetic

    @Alison Rose : someone hire me for remote work that doesn’t involve the phone, please kthx)

    Open mystery boxes on YouTube or stream videogames on Twitch.

  34. 34.

    gene108

    At some level, we need to reward good behavior for people who may easily cross the line into bad behavior,

    I feel like it’s akin to how we treat children. “Good job!” you pooped in the potty! Or some other task automatically assumed an adult would do.

    I mean all these Republicans that didn’t break the law, while surrounded by a criminal gang are getting a pat on the back for not giving into peer pressure, like some 1980’s after school special.

    I mean so many supervillain origin stories are guys trying to get along, and after trying to do the right thing and being rejected, they permanently turn to a life of crime.

    Do we really want to turn Mike Pence into a criminal mastermind?

  35. 35.

    Kropacetic

    Someone in the thread downstairs said they’re tired of hearing Democrats lionize Republicans for basic shit like doing their constitutionally mandated jobs.

    The soft bigotry of low expectations…

    @gene108: Do we really want to turn Mike Pence into a criminal mastermind halfwit?

    That’s more like it.

  36. 36.

    prostratedragon

    Movie note: On TCM @ 8 Eastern, The Best Years of Our Lives. Try not to miss the beginning (as I will) if you’ve never seen it.

  38. 38.

    Baud

    @gene108:

    Do we really want to turn Mike Pence into a criminal mastermind?

     
    I suspect we are only capable of turning him into a criminal.

  39. 39.

    JanieM

    @Old School:

    Not a lawyer, but if the witness hasn’t appeared yet, wouldn’t Trump have an argument that he wasn’t trying to influence testimony?

    I’m not a lawyer either, for the record. But I don’t understand this question. What would be the point of trying to influence a witness after they had already testified?

  40. 40.

    JWR

    Hmm, Cheney says it was “a witness we have not seen in these hearings”. So how many witnesses do we know about that we haven’t seen or heard from yet? Or, was Cheney implying that TFG called a witness whose identity is known only to the committee?

  41. 41.

    Kropacetic

    @JanieM: What would be the point of trying to influence a witness after they had already testified?

    That was some really compelling testimony, some top-notch stuff. I got an award for you, in fact. It’s on the bottom of the east river. I got you some special shoes to help you reach it.

  44. 44.

    HumboldtBlue

    @JWR:

    was Cheney implying that TFG called a witness whose identity is known only to the committee?

    That’s my take.

  45. 45.

    Keith P.

    The elephant in the room is that it looks a lot like the Trump PACs paying for associates’ legal defenses is merely a way to get early word on who is testifying and when so that someone can have a loyalty conversation beforehand.  If Trump is making the calls himself, either nobody else wants any part of the dirty work, or it’s somebody big (or both).

  47. 47.

    Jay

    @Old School:

    if the witness has not testified yet, attempting to contact and influence them in their future testimony, is considered witness tampering, ( outside of a deposition),

    ditto for attempting to contact a witness unknown to the Committee,

    ditto for trying not o contact a witness after their testimony, in an attempt to get them to recant or change key parts of their testimony.

  48. 48.

    Irony Abounds

    Hopefully they actually have Trump on a voicemail saying something incriminating. If all they have is that Trump called it will be difficult to make a case because he can (and will) say all he intended to say is for the witness to tell the truth. It would be a lie, but impossible to disprove.

  49. 49.

    Timurid

    The only way the phone story goes anywhere is if Trump left a message. Otherwise there are just too many bombproof excuses… “I just wanted to talk about the Yankees game” “Someone else was using the phone” “I butt dialed” etc., etc…

  52. 52.

    Kent

    Trump often obsesses about the little stuff and about appearances.

    So my guess would be his witness tampering was to his personal secret service guy who was on his staff.  Because after the last hearing there was a concerted effort to undermine Hutchinson’s testimony about Trump assaulting the Secret Service limo driver.

    That story was not integral to her testimony, but there was furious pushback on that one point.  I’m guessing Trump was desperately trying to undermine Hutchinson’s story about the limo in order to discredit her entire testimony.

  53. 53.

    Timurid

    @Baud: It was obviously from a number that belonged to Trump, but unless he spoke to somebody (directly or indirectly) I don’t know where they can go with it.

  54. 54.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Timurid: I am dumb when it comes to technology, and the law, but how easy would it be for someone with a smart phone to record a call? they see who’s calling, or get the “please hold for President trump” as I’m sure he likes to have someone do, and hits record?

    and are DC, VA and MD states where one party can record a call without the other’s knowledge? And, again IANAL, this committee isn’t bound by those kind of niceties, are they? though the DoJ might be (?)

  57. 57.

    Martin

    @Betty Cracker: Yeah, I assumed it was Anthony Ornato. Someone Trump was close to and who would refute Hutchinson’s testimony. He met the Jan 6 committee at least twice and I don’t recall any video of him being presented.

    @Old School: I think the ‘plausible deniability’ defense is really overwrought. The courts aren’t so dumb as to misunderstand ‘It’d be a shame if anything happened to your family’ as not being a threat if you have a motive for it to be a threat.

    Cheney wouldn’t have brought it up if Trump wasn’t responding directly to a known witness.

    The whole Suburban event really has been a trap. It’s hearsay, so kind of useless, and frankly trivial relative to there direct evidence given, and yet… Trump is so image conscious that he’ll commit new crimes just to clean up after that. The story puts the secret service and Ornato in a tricky spot because in order to defend against the hearsay it opens them up to answering a shitload of questions they don’t want to answer. And it’s not uncommon to undermine your own credibility by rushing in to attack someone else’s (reminded of Ed Whelan using Zillow to prove Kavanaugh couldn’t have assaulted Christine Ford, which just made him look like a fucking clown).

  58. 58.

    gene108

    @Medicine Man:

    It is only natural to admire Cheney for metaphorically stabbing these bastards in the gut, given how much we wish more of the Dem politicians had the same instinct.

    I’m not sure how one separates metaphorical gut stabbing tendencies, and the authoritarian mindset those tendencies require.

  59. 59.

    narya

    @zhena gogolia: The thing is, positive reviewer comments ARE helpful! It’s useful to know what we did right! Not every review/er is all that helpful (I particularly love when someone says “they didn’t talk about X” when there are pages devoted to talking about X), but even then it’s useful to see where we might need to make the argument a little differently.

  60. 60.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Martin:

    The courts aren’t so dumb as to misunderstand ‘It’d be a shame if anything happened to your family’ as not being a threat if you have a motive for it to be a threat.

    are you counting jurors as part of the courts? cause all it takes is one who manages to successfully hid a MAGA hat, literally or metaphorically, through the course of a trial

  62. 62.

    cckids

    @rikyrah: of course he tried to witness tamper.

    I know, right? And AFTER the last hearing, with the emphasis on witness tampering and how very very illegal it is.

    Jesus on a pogo stick, but that man is dumber than a bucket of hair.

  63. 63.

    Timurid

    My other big worry is the Bolton interview. A guy who supposedly held a grudge against Trump just fell on a grenade for him. “As someone who is an expert on awful, illegal stuff, mainly because I’ve done lots of awful illegal stuff, I’m here to tell you there’s nothing especially awful or illegal about what Trump did.” He handed the media a golden opportunity to minimize today’s news, and they’re going to pick up that ball and run with it like Walter Fucking Payton.

    (To clarify above comments, everything in today’s hearing other than the phone call story was straight fire, but the MSM just got handed a chance to avoid it.)

  65. 65.

    kindness

    Trump did it.  He’s stupid and hot headed enough to call any one of the people who have testified so far.  At the very least he would has his aide to place the call which is the same thing.

  66. 66.

    Martin

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: With no prep, you pretty much need an external recording device ready to go. With prep, pretty trivial. iPhone doesn’t allow you to do it on the device, Android does and there’s lots of apps. But the easiest universal solution is to get a Google Voice number if you think you might need to record a conversation. Basically it serves as a router for the call and can forward the call to as many devices as you want – but the key feature is that it can record directly into your Google Drive account – even if you are answering the call from a land line, feature phone, or iPhone.

    If I were talking to the Jan 6 committee, I’d set that account up immediately.

  70. 70.

    mrmoshpotato

    @zhena gogolia:

    The minion who replied to us had cut out and sent to us only the negative parts of the reports, “because praise is not helpful.” 

    LOL!  What horrible childhood that person must’ve had…

  72. 72.

    Martin

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: You can’t account for jurors. What I’m saying is that the court wouldn’t dismiss that as inadmissible. They wouldn’t dismiss is as not being evidence of intent. Juries will do whatever the fuck they want.

  76. 76.

    randy khan

    @Alison Rose :

    And honestly at this point, as far as punishment for Trump, can we just let Liz be in a room alone with him for half an hour? Tie him to a chair and give her whatever tools she would like.

    I’m sure she would prefer to use her own tools, and has them in abundance, probably a gift from Daddy.

  77. 77.

    Kropacetic

    @Alison Rose : So open the boxes in silence. Maybe have some captions. Or does the desire to be off- camera extend to your hands?

    What about some sort of remote data entry?

  81. 81.

    JPL

    @Timurid: Jake did respectfully disagree.   I can’t imagine why CNN’s ratings are tanking under the new boss.  I wonder how long it will take the principled journalists, to bolt.  I think Berman goes first.

  82. 82.

    stacib

    @Baud: Supposedly, it was a recording the person turned over to their lawyer who then notified the committee.

  83. 83.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Betty Cracker:

    You can sort of see Trump’s silhouette bouncing around angrily…

    Both disgusting (because Dump is a fascist manbaby who tried to overthrow the US government after 4+ years of sucking Putin’s ass) and hilarious.

  84. 84.

    Mallard Filmore

    @Alison Rose :

     

    can we just let Liz be in a room alone with him for half an hour? Tie him to a chair and give her whatever tools she would like.

    I immediately flashed on a Person Of Interest scene. Search YouTube for “Person of Interest – Root vs Control”

    first scene link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebdKJIJcIaY
    title: “Person of Interest – Root vs Control [PART 1/3] (03×12)”

    In part 2, Control does a Stapedectomy on Ms Shaw (Root).

  87. 87.

    Sister Golden Bear

    I don’t intend to lionize Cheney, whose views are uniformly appalling on every other topic except the Trump crime spree.

    But I will note that Cheney is kind of a badass.

    Being the enemy of my enemy doesn’t make someone good, it merely makes them useful. And right now Cheney is proving herself to be extremely useful.

    Also, too… [Gozilla “let them fight” gif]

  88. 88.

    Ken

    @gene108: I’m not sure how one separates metaphorical gut stabbing tendencies, and the authoritarian mindset those tendencies require.

    You remind me, I should re-read Pratchett.  I think Men at Arms is the one where Captain Carrot demonstrates literally that.

  89. 89.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @stacib:

    Per LC, the person didn’t answer the phone, so there could be a message left on the recorder.

    ah, missed that detail. Still, easy for me to imagine oaf leaving a long, rambling message

  90. 90.

    Martin

    @Kropacetic: Like operating a set of bot accounts for propaganda purposes? Another occupation that is done without any real human interaction.

  91. 91.

    Kropacetic

    @Baud: A Stopped Clock Pin.

    Correct too frequently to represent Pence’s contribution.

    Martin: I can’t personally speak to Alison Rose’s programming skills, but definitely fits her criteria.

  94. 94.

    Ken

    @stacib: Per LC, the person didn’t answer the phone, so there could be a message left on the recorder.

    Oh come now. A person threatening a witness would have to be an absolute moron to leave a —

    Never mind.

  97. 97.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Kropacetic: ​It’s a homophone.

    Except that in the original Italian it’s pronounce Chip O’Loanay, you linguistically-clueless medigani (scuotando la testa)…

  98. 98.

    James E Powell

    Someone in the thread downstairs said they’re tired of hearing Democrats lionize Republicans for basic shit like doing their constitutionally mandated jobs.

    I get that. Totally. Because I’m paranoid. Because I’ve been watching the way our political media works for the last 40 years. Because they would love to adopt a narrative like “Trump was a monster. We all knew it. Thank God the Republicans did something about it. If the Democrats hadn’t been so focused on defunding the police, grooming our children, and forcing schools to teach critical race theory instead of math, this wouldn’t have happened.”

    I exaggerate, but not that much really.

  99. 99.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @HumboldtBlue: ​I have it on good authority (one of his schoolmates) that Bolton’s been a complete ass since his days at McDonough School outside Baltimore 50-some years ago.

  101. 101.

    oldgold

     

    Sorry, but this is not going anywhere. It is a waste of time.

    The witness did not take the call.  As such, you can’t prove tampering.

  103. 103.

    Almost Retired

    Loved the hearing, but it’s back to trial prep.

    It’s chafes me that I can’t just give the jury some popcorn and Dr Pepper,  show them videos and a few carefully selected in-person witnesses, and then send them back to deliberate.  Instead, I gotta deal with an irksome Judge, unnecessarily complicated rules of evidence, and a Defendant who’s actually in the room, and not just fuming at home.  The system sucks!

  105. 105.

    Roger Moore

    @Old School:

    Not a lawyer, but if the witness hasn’t appeared yet, wouldn’t Trump have an argument that he wasn’t trying to influence testimony?

    No, or at least it would be a tremendous uphill fight.  You don’t get a pass on witness tampering just because the person you tampered with hasn’t yet become a witness.  If you try to get them to change their future testimony, you’re tampering.  And if there’s any kind of documentary evidence for the tampering, it’s likely to contain at least a tacit admission Trump thought they were likely to testify.

  106. 106.

    gene108

    @Hoodie:

    so I wonder if she ever thinks about what made her party particularly vulnerable to Trumpism, i.e., what made Trump identify the GOP as such easy marks. After all, Trump had previously been sniffing around the edges of the Democratic Party, but his target appeared to change after Obama got elected. The kind of demagoguery Trump engages in is just a few steps removed from that of some GOP predecessors, such as Palin and Darth Cheney himself. It might be fascinating to talk with Liz Cheney off the record if you could get her to be honest.

    The Bush-Cheney administration leaned heavily into trying to vindicate conservative ideology, such as tax cuts pay for themselves, abstinence only education is effective, etc.

    They failed miserably.

    Couple that with the coordinated heavy reliance on big money donors, after the Citizens United decision, to flood the airwaves with negative ads, which got Republicans wins in 2010, whatever core Republicans might’ve had was totally hollowed out. They became puppets to do the bidding of whoever was contributing to them. President Obama broke something in a lot of Americans, most noticeably white Americans, and we still haven’t recovered.

    They still had some supporters for trying to have a coherent ideology, which Romney and Ryan tried using to bullshit their way through the 2012 campaign. After their loss, as The Onion predicted about what Republican voters wanted:

    After Obama Victory, Shrieking White-Hot Sphere Of Pure Rage Early GOP Front-Runner For 2016

    https://www.theonion.com/after-obama-victory-shrieking-white-hot-sphere-of-pure-1819595330/amp

    And Trump was that white hot ball of rage Republican voters yearned for ever since 2012.

    Republicans core economic ideology, since Reagan has failed. Their social agenda is counter to what a majority of Americans want.

    All they have to offer their voters to feed their anger and resentment that Trump’s so good at doing. Republicans could do what President Clinton did, when the Democratic ideas of the 1960’s became unpopular, and say that was then, this now and we’ve listened to the voters and have a third way forward.

    They can’t do this because Republicans are utterly beholden to the dark money folks that could pump millions into any primary challenger, or withhold their contributions come campaign time.

    They have no center, so it’s easy for Trump to take over the empty husk of the Republican Party. He won an election, in 2016, that even Republicans thought would be tough for them to win. This gave Trump instant credibility with them. He showed them a way forward by focusing almost exclusively on resentment.

  107. 107.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    My bet is is Trump is after Hutchinson because those stories of him throwing hamburgers at the wall like a child hurt him with his base. I know it sounds dumb to us but apparently in MAGA world mythology Trump is always cool and collected.

  111. 111.

    karen marie

    @Alison Rose :  You can watch it on CSPAN.  I was surprised to hear today was the 7th hearing.  I know I haven’t watched seven, so I’m going back and starting at the beginning.

    It’s a bit irritating that CSPAN hasn’t made it easy (that I’ve found) by providing a list of the hearings.  When I do a search even for a specific date – like the first hearing, June 9 – I get a whole bunch of other stuff and not the hearing itself.  I had to google it to then find the CSPAN link for that first hearing.

    Regardless, it’s a great way to view them because there are no interruptions by talking heads.

  112. 112.

    mrmoshpotato

    @prostratedragon:

    Movie note: On TCM @ 8 Eastern, The Best Years of Our Lives. Try not to miss the beginning (as I will) if you’ve never seen it. 

    Great movie, but not at all a feel good movie.

  113. 113.

    danielx

    @gene108: ​
     

    Do we really want to turn Mike Pence into a criminal mastermind?

    Um….I don’t think he has the qualifications to be a criminal mastermind or any other kind of mastermind.

  114. 114.

    Jay

    @oldgold:

    one doesn’t have to prove that the witness’s testimony was tampered with,

    one just has to prove that an attempt was made outside of the discovery process and cross examination.

  116. 116.

    Ruckus

    @gene108:

    “Do we really want to turn Mike Pence into a criminal mastermind?”

    Don’t you mean criminal nevermind?

    There doesn’t seem to be enough there to make master level.

  118. 118.

    Ken

    @oldgold: I’m not a lawyer, so could you clarify? Is there some requirement in the law that tampering involve a live communication, such that a recorded message (or a letter, or an email) isn’t evidence of the attempt?

    If so it appears that organized crime has been missing a very easy get-out-of-jail-free card for decades. “Yes, your honor, I did write this letter saying that I would have the witness and his family murdered if he testified. But it wasn’t tampering, because I didn’t say that to him in a phone call.”

  119. 119.

    trollhattan

    @oldgold:

    What do you suppose caller I.D. shows when Trump calls?

    “Donald J. Trump, 45th and still President of the United States and if you don’t believe me I’ll shoot you on 5th Avenue” is hard to fit on a single screen.

  120. 120.

    karen marie

    @Old School:  A person doesn’t have to have testified for a charge of witness tampering to be proved.  Laws vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction but in Massachusetts the charge of “intimidation of a witness” – eg “witness tampering” – has three elements that the Commonwealth has to prove beyond a reasonable doubt.

    First, that the Defendant directly or indirectly threatened or attempted to cause physical injury or caused physical injury or attempted to cause emotional injury or did cause emotional injury, attempted to cause economic injury or did cause economic injury, attempted to cause property damage or caused property damage, or conveyed a gift, offer or promise of anything of value to, or misled or intimidated or harassed another person and that, number two, the other person was a witness or a potential witness at any stage of a criminal investigation and, three, that the Defendant did so either willfully, with the specific intent to impede, obstruct, delay or otherwise interfere with a criminal investigation, or that the Defendant acted in reckless disregard of the impact his conduct would have had in impeding, obstructing, delaying or otherwise interfering with that criminal proceeding.

    I’d find Individual-1 guilty as charged.

  121. 121.

    Kropacetic

    @Jay: Sorry, the correct answer is scissors.

    ETA: I make an excellent breakfast burrito that I only ever serve for dinner.

  123. 123.

    trollhattan

    @Ken: Any call I decline rolls to voice mail. This is how I know seven thousand people wish to extend my car warranty.

  125. 125.

    Anyway

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques:

    My bet is is Trump is after Hutchinson because those stories of him throwing hamburgers at the wall like a child hurt him with his base.

    Hahaha! Drumpf throwing a tantrum and hamburgers was the least surprising thing to me. I had no trouble believing that.

    I am at work and missed the hearings – sounds entertaining from the comments here.

  126. 126.

    JPL

    When I had a land line, trump left me a message to vote for Kelly.   I got rid of my land line.

  127. 127.

    Burnspbesq

    @Keith P.:

    Trump PACs paying for associates’ legal defenses

    … which is a pretty egregious conflict of interest for the lawyers. See DC Rules of Professional Conduct, Rule 1.8(e).

    DOJ should move to disqualify anybody who is being paid by anyone other than the defendant/witness they represent.

  128. 128.

    Kropacetic

    @JPL: We already know because of Ukraine that Trump is dumb enough to leave incriminating voice recordings.

  129. 129.

    Ruckus

    @JWR:

    A point here.

    A lot of witnesses have given testimony to the committee investigators, testimony that we haven’t seen. (I don’t recall who those investigators actually are) We’ve seen some segments of that in the committee hearing videos. So it’s likely that we are seeing the highlights, but there seems to be a ton of testimony that backs up a lot of what we’ve heard or seen, IOW there is a lot more to this than only what we’ve seen.

  130. 130.

    Jay

    @oldgold:

    witness tampering does not need to be successful to be charged and convicted.

    All that is required is that an attempt was made outside of discovery and cross examination.

    So yeah, a voice mail message counts.

  132. 132.

    Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony

    @dmsilev:

    I guess Trump is starting to learn the limits of his mob-boss approach to loyalty. When your former minions don’t fear you any more, they have no reason to keep their mouths shut about anything.

    I’d bet they are still afraid of Trump and his fanatic followers. However, they might just be more afraid of prison.

  134. 134.

    oldgold

    This is what Cheney said:

    “After our last hearing, President Trump tried to call a witness in our investigation. A witness you have not yet seen in these hearings. That person declined to answer or respond to President Trump’s call and instead alerted their lawyer to the call.”

    If that is it, there is no crime. Period.

  136. 136.

    Citizen Alan

    @Timurid:

    And yet, Bill Clinton talking to  Loretta Lynch for five minutes to show her pictures of his grandkids was so beyond the pale, it led to Lynch recusing herself from everything about Hillary Clinton and Richard fucking Comey being unleashed on the nation.

  138. 138.

    UncleEbeneezer

    18 U.S. Code § 1512 – Tampering with a witness, victim, or an informant:
    (b)Whoever knowingly uses intimidation, threatens, or corruptly persuades another person, or attempts to do so, or engages in misleading conduct toward another person, with intent to—

    (1) influence, delay, or prevent the testimony of any person in an official proceeding;

    (2)cause or induce any person to—

    (A) withhold testimony, or withhold a record, document, or other object, from an official proceeding;

    (B) alter, destroy, mutilate, or conceal an object with intent to impair the object’s integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding;

    (C) evade legal process summoning that person to appear as a witness, or to produce a record, document, or other object, in an official proceeding; or

    (D) be absent from an official proceeding to which such person has been summoned by legal process; or

    (3) hinder, delay, or prevent the communication to a law enforcement officer or judge of the United States of information relating to the commission or possible commission of a Federal offense or a violation of conditions of probation [1]supervised release,,[1] parole, or release pending judicial proceedings;

    shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.

  140. 140.

    Ohio Mom

    @Citizen Alan: Totally off topic, how is the job hunt going? I just want to hear you are landing in a Blue state, which is what I remember was your goal.

  141. 141.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Ken: What @oldgold means is that if ALL it was is the fact that Trump tried to call the witness but we have no way to determine content, then it’s sketchy but not illegal and we can’t prove intent or what Trump was trying to do.

    There’s a lot of speculation that Trump left a voicemail, though that hasn’t been confirmed or denied.

  142. 142.

    Another Scott

    @Timurid:

    TFG has been here before, and we all know it. Bolton running interference won’t help.

    The President: I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine the Secret Service knows a lot about it. I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine the January 6 Committee, they say Crowdstrike… I guess you have one of your wealthy people… The server tapes, they say Ukraine the Secret Service has it. There are a lot of things that went on, the whole situation. I think you’re surrounding yourself with some of the same people. I would like to have the Attorney General Rudy or MTG call you or your people and I would like you to get to the bottom of it. As you saw yesterday, that whole nonsense ended with a very poor performance by a man named Robert Mueller woman named Cassidy Hutchinson, an incompetent performance, but they say a lot of it started with Ukraine the Secret Service. Whatever you can do, it’s very important that you do it if that’s possible.

    It was a Perfect Call!!1

    (groucho-roll-eyes.gif)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  143. 143.

    Roger Moore

    @narya: 

    The thing is, positive reviewer comments ARE helpful! It’s useful to know what we did right!

    I would go much further than this: being told what you did right is much more useful than being told what you did wrong. There are far more ways of being wrong than being right, so learning something was done right gives you more information. Of course the most useful thing of all is telling someone what the right way- or at least a good way- is when they got it wrong. “I hated this scene” is not useful criticism. “This scene sucks because the dialog never goes anywhere” is much more helpful.

  144. 144.

    Fair Economist

    @Hoodie: I’m pretty sure Liz Cheney wants the much softer authoritarianism her father and W were trying for – indefinite rule via media manipulation and manufactured crises a la the Iraq War, with bones thrown the the underclass via Medicare Part D and immigration reform so they wouldn’t face an infuriated majority.

    Her concern with Trumpism is, I think, an acute awareness that full fascism is dangerous for everybody, including its supporters. Plus being aware that she was going to be on the outs with any such institution. I think she fantasizes about getting the Republican party to reject Trump’s frank fascism and go back to her preferred softer approach. It’s pretty unlikely, but even if she fails she’s better off with a cozy position with the Carlisle Group or some such than wondering when the Red Hats are coming for her, so she’s all in on defeating Trumpism.

  145. 145.

    Sister Golden Bear

    @oldgold:

    The witness did not take the call.  As such, you can’t prove tampering.

    There’s this thing called voicemail….

    Also, what Liz Cheney did is a called a teaser. Doesn’t need to include the full details.

  146. 146.

    oldgold

    @Sister Golden Bear: Yes, there is. Cheney made no mention that Trump left a message. If he had, she should have said so.

    Based on what she said, there is no crime. And, the idea that Garland would pursue this, of all things, is preposterous.

  147. 147.

    Bill Arnold

    @Hoodie:

    so I wonder if she ever thinks about what made her party particularly vulnerable to Trumpism, i.e., what made Trump identify the GOP as such easy marks.

    Rick Perlstein covered the basics of this well in The Long Con, November 2012.
    TL;DR a large fraction of the US right wing base is reliably gullible, and this is exploited, for both political and financial gain.

  149. 149.

    Citizen Alan

    @gene108:  For 4 years, I kept that onion headline as the mast head of my Facebook page. On some some level, I feel guilty over trump’s election because I challenged the gods of cruel irony.

  150. 150.

    RSA

    @Kropacetic: The source for “Patsy Baloney” appears to be closed-caption software.  Screenshots show other variations that are pretty great, too: Pat’s Abalone, pats if aloni, and pets of belonging.

  151. 151.

    lowtechcyclist

    Cheney, whose views are uniformly appalling on every other topic except the Trump crime spree.

    Several days ago, a clip from the Wyoming Congressional primary debate was featured here. There were two other issues she wasn’t appalling on. She is very supportive of the support we’re providing to Ukraine, and her reaction to the Covid pandemic is no different than you’d expect from any other major public health emergency.

    My take is still that until I know she’s on our side on an issue, the best course is to assume she isn’t. But I’d be curious to know what she thinks about the CRT and ‘grooming’ panics.

  152. 152.

    Ruckus

    @gene108:

    “He showed them a way forward by focusing almost exclusively on resentment.”

    SFB is very good at resentment. He was raised on it. Bathed in it constantly. Inherited tons of it when his father died. Stole box cars of it from his siblings, because they weren’t using their’s.

    He’s great at resentment, so great at it that everything else has fallen through the cracks, was thrown out with the empty crack containers, sold for pennies on the dollar. He resents that he could only steal 400 million$ from his siblings. He resents that his abilities were left in the umbilical cord. He resents that the world doesn’t recognize his genius, which is so small and insignificant that it can’t be found with an electron microscope……

  153. 153.

    p.a.

    Bolton to Tapper: it’s wrong Wrong WRONG for Dems to try tarring the Republican Party with tRump.  It was all TRUMP! not the rest of us, no siree…

    Tapper: *crickets*

  154. 154.

    oldgold

    @Kropacetic: No, but in this specific regard, if a message was left, Cheney should have said so. Trump knows if he did or did not.  As such, there is no reason to keep this information secret.

    The Trump Presidency was awash in crime. Hell, Mueller set forth multiple instances of obstruction of justice. The idea that DOJ is going to hop on a call that was unanswered is a damn joke.

  155. 155.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Kropacetic: Also, the witness may not be legally allowed by DOJ to mention/share any message (if one exists) if it is considered part of a Grand Jury investigation.  The witness may be allowed to testify to 1/6 Committee that a call happened, but nothing more.

  156. 156.

    gwangung

    @oldgold: No, but in this specific regard, if a message was left, Cheney should have said so.

    Again, this is muddy thinking. There is no mandate that she do so. The quote allows for a voicemail (as well as no voicemail). You preclude too much.

  157. 157.

    Kropacetic

    @p.a.: Bolton to Tapper: it’s wrong Wrong WRONG for Dems to try tarring the Republican Party with tRump.  It was all TRUMP! not the rest of us, no siree…

    Republicans have been on a natural progression toward Trump since at least Reagan. Bolton was part of the Trump administration and the next most recent worst administration in US history.

    Then I consider the Romney presidential campaign, the pioneer of Trump’s “lie about everything” strategy.

    No, Mr. Bolton, trash top to bottom.

  159. 159.

    satby

    @Baud: since most of the committee are lawyers AND they have excellent lawyers working for them, I’m betting they’re pretty clear on whether it was potentially indictable.

    Not that I don’t enjoy the hell out of non-lawyers all expounding for shits and giggles.

  160. 160.

    bbleh

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: @zhena gogolia:  Just re Cheneys, the world does not realize its good fortune in Dick Cheney not meeting Barbara Bush before she married GHWB.  Barbara famously was one of the only people Nixon feared, and had Dick and Barb had a child, the Hell Mouth would have opened and the world would have ended.  This is simple math.

  165. 165.

    Jane Austin

    You don’t suppose Trump is dumb enough to have left a voice mail.  Those things can appear on your phone as transcriptions.

  167. 167.

    karen marie

    @artem1s:  Yes, they do.  I just looked at it, and it also does not have (that I can find) all the televised hearings listed with links to watch them.

    Seems like a serious failure to not make it as easy as possible for people to view past hearings.  I pay attention and yet somehow I had no idea today’s hearing was the seventh!

    Especially after today’s hearing, I want to go back to see what I’ve missed.

  168. 168.

    Another Scott

    @Kropacetic: Relatedly, let’s set the WaybackMachine to 1987, via Robyn Pennacchia at Wonkette:

    Sometimes it doesn’t seem like we’ve come very far, especially given that this month we’ve had to watch as our reproductive rights get rolled back to a time before disco. But sometimes it does, at least when you realize how horrifying things were not too long ago.

    Yesterday, while looking for a video of Jim Bakker’s arrest, I happened upon an 11-year-old clip from “The View,” rather gruesomely titled, “Jessica Hahn Smacked Down By Barbara Walters Over Affair.” It is only 38 seconds, but it is an extremely unpleasant 38 seconds.

    In the clip, former host Sherri Shepherd starts to ask Hahn about her “affair” with Jim Bakker. Hahn quickly jumps in to correct her, saying it was not “an affair” like the one Barbara Walters had with Massachusetts Senator Edward Brooke in the 1970s.

    But before she could say, as she has since the beginning, that she was drugged and raped, Hahn was interrupted by Walters, who snapped, “This is about you, my dear. this is not about me. OK?” The audience applauded wildly.

    […]

    It’s not exactly difficult to believe her over Jim Bakker, a convicted fraudster who spent the pandemic hawking fake cures that turn people blue. Oddly enough, it doesn’t seem like people at the time were sure she was lying so much as they didn’t think what happened to Hahn was that bad, or at least not as bad as her posing for Playboy for a million dollars.

    […]

    Yeah, it wasn’t just TFG, Mr. Notlob. All of the Never Trumpers who are now telling us how horrible horrible January 6 was and how TFG was and are now more than happy to dump him and return to the Good Old Days of St. Ronald and all his hangers on, well, they can take a flying leap.

    Grr…,
    Scott.

  170. 170.

    Nicole

    It was me.  I was bitching about it.  Because I’m sick of it.  There is no benefit gained by praising a Republican for doing the bare minimum, because they’re only doing the morally right thing because they have made the calculation that doing the morally wrong thing isn’t, at this moment, going to benefit them.  Pence didn’t even come to the conclusion on his own that he shouldn’t go along with Trump’s plan; he had to call Dan Quayle (WUT) to be told he shouldn’t do it.

    That said, yes, Liz Cheney is very useful right now.   But she’s still a Gooper.  Much like my support of Andrew Cuomo when he was the only gov’t executive not blatantly lying to us about Covid on a daily basis (although there was plenty he was lying about anyway, when it came to light), while I am glad for her now, I am more than willing to throw her back on the garbage heap when her usefulness has come to an end.  Because she is not a good human being.  And I’m not going to pretend she is.

  173. 173.

    Ella in New Mexico

    Someone in the thread downstairs said they’re tired of hearing Democrats lionize Republicans for basic shit like doing their constitutionally mandated jobs. I get that, and I don’t intend to lionize Cheney, whose views are uniformly appalling on every other topic except the Trump crime spree.

    But I will note that Cheney is kind of a badass.

    Will we ever get back to the place in time where we can give credit where credit is due to a member of the Republican party?

    I can.

    I’m so tired of hating people simply because of what political party they belong to. YES I don’t agree wth her on probably a shit-ton of policy issues but dammit, she and I are both fucking REAL patriots,  offended deeply by this cabal’s effort to destroy everything in order to turn us into a monarchy. Why is it a crime to admire her courage and her fearlessness?

    I miss the days where I stood side by side with my friends who were Republicans cheering our kids on at the soccer fields. I miss not even giving a fuck what party people belong to when you invite them over for a BBQ. I miss the days when the Republicans took down Nixon.

    Isn’t this what all of us want the Republicans to be? Decent, courageous human beings who care about right and wrong? And for them to be able to recongize and respect and listen to  those of us in the Democratic point of view?

    Do we never want to be able to work together to make this country better or do we stay in perpetul war with one-another?

  177. 177.

    sab

    @Ella in New Mexico: I am the first Democrat in my family. My Republican parents weren’t monsters. My grandmothers were a racist but my grandfathers weren’ t.  And they were the guys out in the world meeting people and hiring. One of my grandfather’s sisters spent twenty years teaching in Southern Sudan. She only came home when WWII broke out. My parents weren’t monsters. We had domestic help and my mom always paid Social Security when nobody else she knew did. Not a big deal, but way above average for white people.

  179. 179.

    Lacuna Synecdoche

    Betty Cracker @ Top:

    PS: Who do y’all think is the witness Trump tried to contact? Meadows didn’t deign to personally call Hutchinson — he tried to get to her through an intermediary. Trump directly tried to call this mystery person, so that’s…interesting.

    There aren’t a lot of potential witnesses Trump would deign to call personally.

    My guess is that it’s Hope Hicks:

    The New York Times reported in June 2022 that, in the weeks after the 2020 election Trump falsely insisted had been stolen from him, some of his aides quietly disagreed with him. Hicks advised Trump to move on, leading him to say, “Well, Hope doesn’t believe in me,” to which she replied, “No, I don’t. Nobody’s convinced me otherwise.” She disappeared from public view in the final weeks of Trump’s presidency.

  180. 180.

    El Muneco

    @Ella in New Mexico: “Isn’t this what all of us want the Republicans to be? Decent, courageous human beings who care about right and wrong? And for them to be able to recongize and respect and listen to  those of us in the Democratic point of view?”

    You don’t go to elections with the electorate you want, you go with the electorate you have.

    Everyone decent has already abandoned the GOP. This is a big problem in the Democratic Party because there is no sane center-right party for decent people to land. So we keep reaching out to them because they are decent, while forgetting that they are still going to be center-right.

    “Decent, courageous human beings” – does that describe anything you see from the news? “Right and wrong” does that describe any legislation _anywhere_ that has been proposed by the GOP?

    Forget Republicans. By identifying as such, they tell you who they are. Per Maya Angelou, you should believe them.

  181. 181.

    Lacuna Synecdoche

    @oldgold: ​

    The witness did not take the call. As such, you can’t prove tampering.

    Cheney’s announcement seemed to imply that Trump left a phone message – there wouldn’t be any way to know the call was directly from Trump if he hadn’t. Without a message, all the committee would know is that the call came from Trump’s phone.
    So I would assume that the ability to prove witness tampering would depend on the content Trump’s message.​​​

  185. 185.

    Paul in KY

    @Mallard Filmore: I’m assuming you saw Game of Thrones? Maybe the character Ramsey Bolton? Well, Mrs. Cheney is not as forgiving and kind as Mr. Bolton was portrayed…

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