Jan 6: Hearings

But okay, according to their own post facto, entirely self-serving testimony, “Team Comparatively Normal” told Trump that he’d lost on November 7 after all the networks called the election for Biden, describing the prospects of a victory as “5, maybe 10 percent … very, very, very bleak.” In reality, there was a zero percent chance. But having given their assessment, TCN courageously … ceded the field to Rudy and the weirdos…

The Road To The Capitol
The committee goes to great lengths to debunk Trump’s lies about election fraud. They point to hand recounts in Michigan and Georgia, confirming the original tallies, as well as Trump’s repeated references to “suitcases” of fraudulent ballots, even after being told by his own Justice Department that this was totally false. We don’t have to spend a lot of time on that here, because presumably you’re not a mouth-breathing MAGAt, brain poisoned by OAN. But Trump attesting in a legal filing to numbers about supposed fraud in Georgia, when he knew those numbers were false, has already been described by a federal judge as “likely” criminal, and may form the basis of a future prosecution.

But just as importantly, Trump fed these lies to his credulous supporters, who believed them because they implicitly trusted that the leader of our country would not rely on totally made up numbers. And he continued to repeat those lies to the mob on January 6…

Sure, we all giggled at the cosplay electors. We laughed at the Kraken lawsuits. Rudy leaking hair dye at the RNC and convening a press conference in the parking lot of a landscaper across from the porno store was legitimately hilarious. And yet there is a direct through line from these ridiculous people and their obvious bullshit to the mob that descended on the Capitol on January 6.

TL, DR, lock them up. Or, if we can’t do that, figure out how to fix this country so this shit never happens again. Because next time, our adversaries probably won’t be this bloody stupid.

This behind-the-scenes account of how the Jan. 6 committee did its work is really good. [Gift link, should work for all.]

Two comments:

1.) Pelosi!
2.) Reading this, you realize the chances of anything like it being allowed to happen again are near zero. https://t.co/6vS1XkVj7u

— Jay Rosen (@jayrosen_nyu) December 23, 2022

… The most consequential congressional committee in generations was immersed in high drama from beginning to end. It originated six months after a domestic siege of the Capitol. It devoted a year to seeking evidence from sources who were often reluctant or even hostile. It then presented that evidence in the form of captivating televised hearings that were watched by more than 10 million Americans at a time, leading up to the November 2022 midterms in which a clear majority cast their ballots against election denialism. And then the committee concluded its work by making history with its criminal referrals of a former president to the Department of Justice.

But the inner workings of the Jan. 6 committee — members of Congress, lawyers, video producers and assorted staff members totaling about 80 people tasked with investigating a violent attack on American democracy and a sitting president’s role in that attack — have been almost completely shrouded from public view. Through extensive interviews with all nine of the committee’s members and numerous senior staff members and key witnesses, we have been able to reconstruct a previously unreported account of the committee’s fevered, fraught and often chaotic race to a finish line that has always been understood to be Jan. 3, 2023, when the new Congress is sworn in and a new Republican majority in the House would immediately dissolve the committee. Those same efforts took place at a time when the Republican Party was resolutely united behind the committee’s principal target, Trump, with politicians and voters alike joining the former president in lustily condemning the inquiry at every opportunity…

[The NYTimes *really* wants to fluff Liz Cheney’s reputation, no surprise.]

With its expiration date of Jan. 3 looming, the committee spent its final months in a frenzy of activity occasionally marred by bitter contentiousness. Cheney, unsurprisingly, was at the center of the conflicts. One point of disagreement was over her insistence that the committee make criminal referrals of Trump; John Eastman, the lawyer who advised Trump that Pence could overturn the election; and others to the Justice Department, which initially struck Lofgren as an empty symbolic gesture, until Thompson stepped in and helped form a consensus around Cheney’s position.

Far more controversial internally was Cheney’s adamant position that the committee’s final report focus primarily on Trump’s misconduct, while marginalizing the roles of violent domestic actors, their financial organizers and their sympathizers in law enforcement. Informed of this decision in early November, current and former staff members anonymously vented their outrage to news outlets. Some members aligned themselves with the dismayed staff, while other members agreed with Cheney that some of the chapters drafted by different aides did not measure up to the committee’s standards. Still, it seemed excessive to some on the committee when Cheney’s spokesperson claimed to The Washington Post on Nov. 23 that some of the staff members submitting draft material for the report were promoting a viewpoint “that suggests Republicans are inherently racist.”…

In this story of how the Jan. 6 hearings got made, one high point is the appearance of David Brooks. https://t.co/6vS1XkVj7u pic.twitter.com/yI2OwBbpKA

— Jay Rosen (@jayrosen_nyu) December 23, 2022

TL;DR…

This thread presents a brief summary of the substantive findings of the Final Report of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol. My own interpretations of the report will follow later. 0/

— Timothy Snyder (@TimothyDSnyder) December 26, 2022

@sryslysmibuch Bonjour, please find the unroll here: https://t.co/UgMmgBiIuW Enjoy :) ??

— Thread Reader App (@threadreaderapp) December 26, 2022