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Jan. 6 takeaways: Subpoena for Trump, warnings for democracy
By MARY CLARE JALONICK and ERIC TUCKER@APNEWS
WASHINGTON (AP) — The House Jan. 6 committee took the extraordinary action of subpoenaing former President Donald Trump on Thursday as it issued a stark warning in its final public hearing before the midterm election: The future of the nation’s democracy is at stake.
The panel’s October hearing, just weeks ahead of the midterm election, focused on Trump’s state of mind on Jan. 6, 2021 as he egged on his supporters with false claims of election fraud, pushed to accompany them to the Capitol while lawmakers were counting the votes, and then did nothing for hours as the mob violently breached the building.
The committee is set to shut down at the beginning of next year, and was making its final public arguments ahead of a report expected in December.
“We are obligated to seek answers directly from the man who set this all in motion,” said Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, the panel’s vice chairwoman and one of two Republicans on the nine-member committee. “And every American is entitled to those answers. So we can act now to protect our republic.”
A SUBPOENA FOR TRUMP — BUT NOT PENCE
The subpoena for Trump is a major escalation in the probe. After signaling for months that they may leave the former president alone, the unanimous 9-0 vote “for relevant documents and testimony, under oath” was definitive.
The committee had long debated whether to seek testimony from or subpoena Trump or former Vice President Mike Pence. Neither has spoken directly to the committee. While Trump has been hostile to the probe both in court and in public, Pence’s lawyers had engaged with the panel for several months with no clear resolution.
Still, several of Pence’s closest aides have complied with the investigation, with several of them providing great detail about his movements and state of mind as he resisted Trump’s pleas to somehow object to the certification of electoral votes that day and try to overturn their defeat.
In contrast, the committee showed several clips of Trump allies refusing to answer questions before the panel.
Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Democrat, said the committee was “able to nail down every salient detail in pretty much every element of the offense” except for certain details about what Trump was doing and saying as the insurrection unfolded.
‘CONSIDER WHETHER WE CAN SURVIVE’
The lesson of the committee’s investigation is that institutions only hold when people of good faith protect them without regard to political cost, Cheney said during the hearing.
“Why would Americans assume that our Constitution and our institutions in our Republic are invulnerable to another attack? Why would we assume that those institutions will not falter next time?” Cheney asked.
The warnings come as Trump is still refusing to acknowledge that he lost his reelection to Joe Biden and is considering another run in 2024 — and as many Republicans who deny Biden’s win are running in the midterm elections at all levels of government. Many states have replaced election officials who resisted Trump’s pressure campaign.
“Any future president inclined to attempt what Donald Trump did in 2020 has now learned not to install people who could stand in the way,” said Cheney, who lost her own Republican primary this August. “Consider whether we can survive for another 246 years.”
PELOSI AND SCHUMER, IN HIDING
New video aired by the panel showed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi reacting emotionally to the news that her colleagues were donning gas masks in the House chamber as rioters neared. She quickly went to work trying to reopen the Capitol.
Pelosi and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer were seen in unidentified secure locations and talking to security officials. The footage included a conversation between Pelosi and Pence, who was also in a secure location, discussing their return to the session to finish certifying Biden’s victory.
The footage was filmed by Pelosi’s daughter, Alexandra Pelosi, according to two people familiar with the video who requested anonymity to discuss it.
The two leaders are seen working to bring the National Guard to the Capitol amid an hours long delay. At one point, Schumer said he was going to “call up the f’n secretary of DOD,” referring to the Defense Department.
“We have some senators who are still in their hideaways,” Schumer said on the phone. “They need massive personnel now.”
SECRET SERVICE REVELATIONS
The committee has obtained more than 1.5 million pages of documents from the Secret Service in recent weeks. They revealed some of that information in the hearing, including an email from within the agency on Dec. 11, 2020, the day the Supreme Court rejected one of Trump’s attempts to undermine the vote.
“Just fyi. POTUS is p—-d — breaking news —- Supreme Court denied his law suit. He is livid now,” one anonymous Secret Service email said.
Other emails showed that the agency had ample warnings of violence in the weeks and days ahead of the insurrection.
An alert received by the agency on Dec. 24 said multiple online users were targeting members of Congress and “instructing others to march into the chambers,” said California Rep. Adam Schiff, a Democratic member of the panel.
CABINET OFFICIALS
The committee showed prerecorded interviews with Cabinet members, including former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, Attorney General William Barr and Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia, who said they believed that once the legal avenues had been exhausted, that should have been the end of Trump’s effort to remain in power.
Pompeo, who was interviewed by the panel since its last hearing in July, said in his videotaped testimony that he believed that once the Electoral College certified the vote, that was the end of the process for contesting the election. “We should all comply with the law at all times, to the best of our ability — every one of us,” Pompeo said.
Chao, who is married to Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, said she decided to resign after the insurrection because it was “impossible for me to continue given my personal values and my philosophy.”
At the same time, Trump continued to push the false claims of fraud to his millions of supporters.
“President Trump knew the truth. He heard what all his experts and senior staff was telling him,” said Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger, the committee’s other Republican. “His intent was plain: ignore the rule of law and stay in power.”
CRIMINAL REFERRALS
Cheney addressed one of the committee’s remaining questions at the beginning of the meeting, saying that the panel “may ultimately decide to make a series of criminal referrals to the Department of Justice.”
Members of the panel have long suggested they may suggest charges for Trump or others based on their own evidence. While such a referral would not force any action, it would place political pressure on Attorney General Merrick Garland as the department has pursued its own investigations surrounding Jan. 6. And the committee has yet to share any transcripts from its more than 1,000 interviews.
Still, “we recognize that our role is not to make decisions regarding prosecution,” Cheney said.
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Associated Press writers Michael Balsamo, Farnoush Amiri, Kevin Freking and Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report.
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FROM: Real Time with Bill Maher: OCT 8th
"Don't make me be an I told you so again.
You know I was a young man of fifty nine when I started using the term "slow moving coup," and it pains me to have to report it's still moving.
A document came to light a few weeks ago, called the Eastman Memo, which was basically a blueprint prepared for Trump on how he could steal the election after he lost it in November 2020. It outlined a plan for overturning the election by claiming that seven states actually had competing slates of electors which, while not even remotely true, would have given Mike Pence the excuse to throw out those states and thus hand the election to Trump. But of course, the plan required election officials in those states to go along. Trump thought the ones who were Republican would, most did not, and that's what he's been working on fixing ever since.
Some Presidents spend their post-presidency building homes for the poor or raising money for charity or painting their toes. Trump has spent his figuring out how to pull off the coup he couldn't pull off last time. Here's the easiest three predictions in the world:
- Trump will run in 2024,
- He will get the Republican nomination, and
- Whatever happens on election night, the next day he will announce that he won.
I've been saying that ever since he lost, he's like a shark. That's not gone- just gone out to sea. But actually, he's quietly eating people this whole time.
And by "eating people," I mean he's been methodically purging the Republican Party of anyone who voted for his impeachment or doesn't agree that he's the rightful leader of the Seven Kingdoms. Yes, we're going to need a bigger boat.
There was grand total of ten Republican congressmen who voted to impeach Trump and by 2024 even those will all be gone.
One of them was Liz Cheney" arch-Conservative, daughter of Darth Vader, and yet now politically dead in Wyoming,
Another of the ten was Anthony Gonzalez. He's already bowed out for running for re election, because he can see opposing Trump means you have no chance.
The other eight will either, like him not run or they'll get primaried by a Trumper or the'll have a sudden epiphany about how come to think of it, Trump did win that election.
The purge is also at work in Republican legislatures, as several states are already in the process of changing election laws so that they, (not non-partisan election officials), are in charge of certifying the results.
Two weeks after the 2020 election, Trump famously called the Republican in charge of elections in Georgia, Secretary of State Brad Rathsenberger and told him he just needed to "find" an additional eleven thousand Trump votes. Rathsenberger refused but he's not going to be there next time.
Of the fifteen Republicans running for Secretary of State in the key battleground states only two concede that Biden won that election. These are the people Trump is going to call in 2024 when he's a few votes short and these people are going to give it to him.
So here's what's going to happen,
- 2022- the Midterms.
- Republicans win big because the out-of-power party always does in a country where the electorate can't think past throw the bums out.
- So the Republicans take back the House ,where disputed elections are decided, and the speaker is Kevin McCarthy, a man with all the backbone of one of those inflatable tube men outside a car dealership.
- Republicans will also have more key governors.
- Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan all had Democratic governors who protected the vote in 2020 but they're all up for re-election in 2022.
- At least two will lose.
- 2023- Trump announces his candidacy and starts having large rallies across the country which become increasingly angry and threatening as Trump indulges his love for inciting violence.
- I know the Hitler analogy is over the top in many ways.
- I don't think Trump hates Jews- there are too many rich ones.
- I don't think committing genocide is in his future, but
- The mentality of how to take over a country is exactly the same; play on this feeling of 'we have been cheated, robbed, betrayed and now we're gonna take it back.'
- 2/3rds of Republicans believe the election was stolen.
- 21 million believe force is justified to restore Trump to office.
- A majority want to secede( whatever the hell that would entail), and yet-
- 2024 comes and Democrats treat it as a normal election year.
- They are living in a dream world where their choice of candidate matters, their policies matter, the number of votes they get matters.
- None of it does.
- I won't even predict who the Democratic nominee will because itdoesn't matter. It could be Biden, it could be Harris ,it could be Amy Klobuchar, it could be Timothee Chalamet, as long as they have a "D" by their name, they will be portrayed as the leader of the Army of Satan.
- Even if they win, Trump won't accept it.
- But this time his claims of illegal voting by immigrants or mail-in ballots coming in after the deadline, or the system was hacked by Venezuela or whatever Giuliani comes up with on the fly, they will be fully embraced by the stooges he's installing right now.
- December 16, 2024. This is the day electors gather to vote for President.
- Arizona and Wisconsin both send a slate of bogus Trump electors, setting up a showdown on January 6th and daring Kamala Harris to do what Trumpers wanted Mike Pence to do: throw out election results.
- The difference being this time, those results really are phony and this time it's not just 600 diabetic FOX NEWS junkies and a nut in a Viking helmut: Ten million Trump voters have signed a pledge to come to Washington Of course, Nine and a half million flake- but half a million still show up and they're heavily armed and incensed when Harris does what Mike Pence wouldn't.
- Demonstrations grow in the streets, the kind of Antifa vs Proud Boy violence we've seen in Portland erupts across the country.
- People are afraid to go out anywhere where their political tribe is not in the majority.
- Which hurts commerce
- The stock market is spooked by the unrest and tumbles as Inauguration Day approaches.
- President Biden is under extraordinary pressure to do something to stop the coup before his authority over the Military and the Justice Department evaporates at noon on January 20th.
- What happens when two Presidential candidates both show up on Inauguration Day both expecting to be sworn in like a bad sitcom pilot?
The ding-dongs who sacked the Capital last year? That was like when al Qaeda tried to take down the World Trade Center, the first time, with the van- it was a joke.
....but the next time they came back with planes.
I hope I scared the shit out of you.
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