Jan 6 Hearing – Day 8 on Thursday at 8:00 pm Eastern
Looks like they moved the start time to 8 pm.
Jan 6 Select Committee Feed
Jan 6 Hearing – Day 8 on Thursday at 8:00 pm EasternPost + Comments (266)
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
Thursday Morning Open Thread: Today’s Jan6 Committee HearingPost + Comments (8)
Domestic Terrorism Open Thread: The USSS Needs A Thorough Housecleaning
If the Secret Service did this as an organization, might be better to just scrap it and get a new, less-secret agency to be bodyguards. https://t.co/aVDlYnFjgG
— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) July 14, 2022
… Also, the National Archives on Tuesday sought more information on “the potential unauthorized deletion” of agency text messages. The U.S. government’s chief record-keeper asked the Secret Service to report back to the Archives within 30 days about the deletion of any records, including describing what was purged and the circumstances of how the documentation was lost.
The law enforcement agency, whose agents have been embroiled in the Jan. 6 investigation because of their role shadowing and planning President Donald Trump’s movements that day, is expected to share this conclusion with the Jan. 6 committee in response to its Friday subpoena for texts and other records…
Many of its agents’ cellphone texts were permanently purged starting in mid-January 2021 and Secret Service officials said it was the result of an agencywide reset of staff telephones and replacement that it began planning months earlier. Secret Service agents, many of whom protect the president, vice president and other senior government leaders, were instructed to upload any old text messages involving government business to an internal agency drive before the reset, the senior official said, but many agents appear not to have done so.
The result is that potentially valuable evidence — the real-time communications and reactions of agents who interacted directly with Trump or helped coordinate his plans before and during Jan. 6 — is unlikely to ever be recovered, two people familiar with the Secret Service communications system said. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters without agency authorization…
Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi has said that the agency did not maliciously delete text messages and that the Secret Service had lost some data because of a previously planned agencywide replacement of staff telephones. The replacement began a month before the Office of Inspector General made his request, he said last week.
Guglielmi acknowledged that some data on the phones had been lost in the changeover but emphasized that “none of the texts” the OIG was seeking were missing.
Committee Chairman Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.) signaled that the subpoena could resolve the discrepancies in the accounts between the OIG and the Secret Service, which falls under DHS..,
Domestic Terrorism Open Thread: The USSS Needs A Thorough HousecleaningPost + Comments (61)
Memo Schmemo (Open Thread)
I’m a Merrick Garland skeptic in the sense that I suspect nice old Joe Biden gave Garland the AG job as a consolation prize for having been cheated out of a Supreme Court seat via the machinations of Mitch McConnell. It was a nice gesture, and Garland is certainly qualified for the job. But is he the right person for the job in this perilous time? Is he the wartime consigliere democracy requires as Republicans go to the mattresses against the republic? To me, the jury is still out on that.
I don’t know what’s happening behind the scenes, but people who are in a position to know — people whom I find credible, like Adam Schiff and Ruben Gallego — keep expressing doubt about Garland’s DOJ leadership. So, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to be concerned. Garland wouldn’t be the first institutionalist who focused on protecting the reputation of the institution rather than fulfilling that institution’s mission.
All that said, a memo Rachel Maddow obtained and discussed on her show last night sounds like a giant nothing-burger to me: [memo]
NEW: May 25, 2022 Merrick Garland memo to DOJ on “election year sensitivities” doubles down on Barr’s policy against investigating candidates without approval. pic.twitter.com/KIQZMB34Qi
— Maddow Blog (@MaddowBlog) July 19, 2022
We don’t want Barr-like AGs who put their big fat thumbs on the scale for partisan gain, as Barr did when he deceptively pre-spun the Mueller Report and chased Trump’s paranoid deep state fantasies all over the world. We don’t want self-important jackasses like James Comey to throw out the rulebook and take it upon themselves to make last-minute announcements that affect election outcomes. The Garland memo that’s causing the furor prohibits that nonsense, and that’s a good thing.
The line that’s causing the big freak-out is the part where Garland affirms a rule outlined in a 2020 memo Barr issued during his disgraceful tenure, in which Barr required DOJ employees to run any candidate investigations past him prior to starting work. It sure sounds sinister coming from Barr, but that’s because AG Barr was a partisan hack. The rule is only as good as the person enforcing it, which is no longer Barr. In the hands of someone who seems to take his role as an impartial actor seriously in polarized times, it doesn’t strike me as unreasonable at all.
I remain concerned that Garland might decide prosecuting Trump would be too disruptive for the country. That’s every bit as much of a political decision as quashing an investigation that might harm Democrats’ political prospects. And yet, I’ve heard elite DC lawyers make that argument, including former AG Eric Holder, who eventually came around to the pro-prosecution side as the January 6 committee began to reveal the full scope of Trump’s criminal conspiracy to overturn the election.
I also remain hopeful that Garland has experienced a comparable epiphany and will overcome the institutionalist instinct. We don’t know how that will shake out yet, but the much ballyhooed Garland memo tells us nothing useful about that.
Open thread.
‘Pulverized’ (Open Thread)
According to Rolling Stone, Trump’s lawyers are auditioning Mark Meadows for the role of fall guy for the coup plot:
“Mark is gonna get pulverized…and it’s really sad,” predicts one of Trump’s current legal advisers. “Based on talking to [Meadows in the past, it felt like] he doesn’t actually believe any of this [election-theft] stuff, or at least not most of it. He was obviously just trying to perform for Trump, and now he’s maybe screwed himself completely.”
So sad! [ actual size]
The person quoted seems to believe that if Trump really, really thought he won the election, he’s not liable for leading an insurrection to overturn the results. I’m not a lawyer, but Liz Cheney is, and as she noted yesterday, Trump “is a 76-year-old man. He is not an impressionable child.”
More from the Rolling Stone article:
But Trumpland’s concerted efforts to distance the former president and other protected persons from Meadows comes amid a broader search for someone to take the fall. Cheney’s list of patsies on Tuesday included Trumpist lawyer and “coup memo” author John Eastman — whom, as Rolling Stone reporting in June, Trump’s team has been eyeing — and Sydney Powell, another Trump lawyer. Cheney also named Rep. Scott Perry, who allegedly was part of the push to get the Justice Department to overturn the election.
Though it remains to be seen who will ultimately be saddled with the bulk of the blame and legal baggage, it is clear this collective — long known for petty backbiting and infighting before, during, and after the Trump administration — has no intention of all going down together.
If this account is true (and Rolling Stone says it’s based on conversations with eight sources), Trump and his crew understand how damning the committee’s revelations have been so far but believe they can “insulate” Trump from legal exposure if his henchmen go down. That’s not a completely delusional theory — Michael Cohen went to jail for the Stormy Daniels payoff while Individual 1 got off scot-free.
Let’s hope for a different outcome this time. Meanwhile, may the “Trumpland” snarling and under-bussing commence in earnest!
Open thread.
Tuesday’s Jan6 Committee Hearing Open Thread: Early Notes
Excellent summary, IMO. Rep. Cheney is not gonna settle for less than a Red Wedding reenactment:
If there’s one member of the Jan. 6 committee most focused on guiding the Justice Department to charge former president Donald Trump, it’s Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.). Cheney was the first, back in December, to preview the crime that the committee would ultimately focus on: obstruction of an official proceeding of Congress. Cheney later objected when Jan. 6 committee Chairman Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.) said the committee wouldn’t be making a criminal referral to the Justice Department. Cheney said last week that, in fact, multiple criminal referrals could be on the way…
“Now, the argument seems to be that President Trump was manipulated by others outside the administration, that he was persuaded to ignore his closest advisers and that he was incapable of telling right from wrong,” Cheney said.
She added: “The strategy is to blame people his advisers called, quote, ‘the crazies’ for what Donald Trump did. This, of course, is nonsense. President Trump is a 76-year-old man. He is not an impressionable child.”
She said the record, in fact, showed quite the opposite — that he was told over and over again that he had in fact lost his reelection. The committee has shared lots of evidence that he had been told this, and it would play new evidence to that effect Tuesday.
Then came the key line from Cheney: “No rational or sane man in his position could disregard that information and reach the opposite conclusion. And Donald Trump cannot escape responsibility by being willfully blind.”…
But some close to the situation continue to push the idea that ne’er-do-wells were whispering in Trump’s ear and manipulating him — a view that’s consistent with how aides have long talked anonymously about how Trump’s worst impulses came to be. Cheney laid down a marker, asserting that the committee won’t settle for that, even if it could conceivably be used to prove Trump broke the law.
Encrypted communications obtained by the committee show that the leader of the Florida Oath Keepers spoke directly with Roger Stone about security on January 5 and 6 pic.twitter.com/HHp0sBud9Z
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 12, 2022
Tuesday’s Jan6 Committee Hearing Open Thread: Early NotesPost + Comments (116)