Thursday Morning Open Thread: Today’s Jan6 Committee Hearing

Two former White House aides, Matthew Pottinger and Sarah Matthews, are expected to testify at the House Jan. 6 committee's hearing Thursday. The panel will examine what Donald Trump was doing as his supporters broke into the Capitol. https://t.co/gF2ZDHwrtk

— The Associated Press (@AP) July 19, 2022

Rep. Elaine Luria (D-Va.) will co-lead tonight's Jan 6 committee hearing and detail what Trump did and didn’t do as the U.S. Capitol was under attack. @Meagan_Flynn @JaxAlemany introduce you to Luria and explain why she's on this committee: https://t.co/WBTBU9jMWW

— Jenna Johnson (@wpjenna) July 21, 2022

Seriously, read the whole thing:

She couldn’t forget the time: 1:46 p.m.

It was the moment Rep. Elaine Luria (D-Va.) evacuated her office on Jan. 6, 2021, after police found pipe bombs on Capitol Hill. A year later, on Jan. 6, 2022, it was the exact same time Luria announced her reelection campaign — unmistakably linking her bid for a third term representing a swing district on the Virginia coast to her service on the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol.

Now, Luria is preparing for her most defining moment on the committee yet: At the committee’s finale of this summer’s series of hearings, she and Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) will detail what former president Donald Trump did and didn’t do over 187 minutes as the U.S. Capitol was under attack, and as Luria and hundreds of colleagues took cover.

Their presentation is expected to squarely place the blame for the violence on Trump after his months of false claims of voter fraud and will examine his reluctance to condemn the attack — culminating in what the panel plans to describe as a dereliction of duty and violation of his oath. It’s an assignment that people involved with the committee’s work say Luria specifically sought — even as she gears up for her toughest reelection campaign yet in a district that got redder after redistricting.

But with an air of defiance, the former Navy commander has said she is unconcerned about any potential political consequences that her role in unspooling the former president’s inaction on Jan. 6 could have in her own political future — a message that, rather than whispered to confidants, she has put front and center in her campaign….

Garrett Ziegler, a former Trump WH aide, lost his mind after his interview with the @January6thCmte yesterday.

He accused the committee of being “anti-white” and referred to his female colleagues who spoke out against Trump as “thots and hoes.” pic.twitter.com/S7wOdH3tY1

— The Republican Accountability Project (@AccountableGOP) July 20, 2022

Mr. Charles P. Pierce, at Esquire:

… On Tuesday, entering stage right was one Garrett Ziegler, a former aide to Peter Navarro, a White House official at Camp Runamok whose primary post-administration* occupation seems to be copping to everything on television. Evidently, it was Ziegler who facilitated the now-legendary Oval Office Crackpot Summit on December 18, 2020. From CNN:

The New York Times previously reported that Ziegler had taken credit for admitting the group into the White House. Other Trump officials, including former White House counsel Pat Cipollone, have previously testified to the committee that they were surprised and concerned upon learning that Powell and Flynn were meeting with Trump in the Oval Office that day. Cipollone and other White House aides said they aggressively pushed back against the extreme proposals that were raised during the meeting, as was fleshed out at last week’s January 6 hearing. The panel showed text messages between two Trump White House aides from the time of the meeting, with one calling it “unhinged.”

… Back in March, a report in the Guardian fingered Ziegler as one of the people behind the bizarre confabulations regarding Dominion’s voting machines, a series of hallucinations central to what has come to be known as The Big Lie…

According to Politico, Ziegler also has been deeply involved in keeping the Hunter Biden laptop story aloft…

Sooprize, sooprize, sooprize…

… Newsmax has broadcast at least 40 false claims or conspiracy theories about the attack since June, when a House committee began televising its evidence about the role former President Donald Trump and his allies played in the day’s events, according to NewsGuard, a tech firm that monitors misinformation.

“If you’re watching Newsmax, you may come away with an entirely different feeling of what happened at the hearings, and what happened on Jan. 6,” NewsGuard analyst Jack Brewster said of the findings.

Many of the falsehoods, presented by anchors, reporters and guests who include Republican members of Congress, have been repeatedly debunked. Newsmax did not comment on the report…