The testimony of Cassidy Hutchinson, the former aide to Mark Meadows (chief of staff to Trump) was riveting. If you didn’t see it, find it on the Internet and watch in full.
What she described was a conspiracy to overthrow the results of the election, a last-ditch effort to keep Trump in power by any means necessary.
Trump was speaking at the Ellipse and was disappointed by the crowd size (again!). When he realized that many of his supporters were excluded because they were carrying guns, he wanted the metal detectors removed so all his supporters could join the crowd because they weren’t gunning for him.
Trump expected to join an armed mob marching to the Capitol. That was the plan. But his own Secret Service guards wouldn’t let him go there because he might be in danger. He tried to grab the steering wheel of the SUV, but was thwarted by his personal guard, whom he tried to throttle. Personally, I regret that his security detail did not take him to the Capitol. Imagine the scene. The president in the midst of a mob, smashing windows, banging on the doors of the Senate Chamber, chanting “Hang Mike Pence,” perhaps putting his feet on Pelosi’s desk. If that had happened, not only would he have been disgraced in the eyes of the world, but he would have to abandon his phony protestations of innocence.
But his security detail protected him from himself.
Back at the White House, he watched the mob deface the Capitol and ignored pleas by friends like Kevin McCarthy, Jim Jordan, Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, even Ivanka and Don Jr. to call off the marauders. He did nothing. Meadows did nothing.
Hutchinson went on to describe his reaction when Trump learned in December that Bill Barr had told the AP that the Justice Department had not found fraud of a size that would change the election result: he threw his plate against the wall of the White House private dining room, smearing the walls with catsup and the floor with broken porcelain. This was not the only time this happened, she testified under oath. Trump was also known to pull the tablecloth off the table, sending the food and dishes to the floor. (Was he trying that magic trick where the magician pulls the cloth and all the dishes remain in place?)
After hours of violence in the Capitol, Trump finally made a video calling on his supporters to go home. He said “I love you.”
Not long afterwards, his political allies ludicrously claimed that the invasion of the Capitol had been staged by Antifa. Why did Trump tell Antifa “I love you”? If they were Antifa, why did he want so badly to join them as they rioted? If they were Antifa, why didn’t he tell them to go home immediately? Why were so many Proud Boys and Oathkeepers and other militant crackpots leading the crowd if they were Antifa?
The corpulent man-baby was a sore loser. He preferred to destroy our system of government and unleash violence and mayhem in the Capitol rather than admit defeat. He sent a mob that he knew was armed to wreak maximum damage on the Natuon’s Capitol. He would have been satisfied to see his servile Vice-President Mike Pence hung by the mob, to see Nancy Pelosi beaten to death by the mob, to see Senators and members of the House brutalized, and to unleash the raging horde on all his political enemies rather than admit that he lost the election.
The Republican Party and its elected leaders has embraced the bully who has dragged them into the muck of rebellion, violence, and contempt for the Constitution. As Liz Cheney memorably said to her colleagues at the first meeting of the 1/6 Commission: “There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain.”
Honor? When did we last hear that word mentioned in the same breath with the name of President 45? Will the Republican Party survive its servile embrace of the Malevolent Fool who would be King?
What, if any consequences, will there be for a man who attempted to overthrow the government and shred the Constitution? And for those who aided and abetted his treason?
You can tell, in his mind, he actually thought he was going to get away with it, that all he had to do was waddle down to the Capitol and get himself crowned Emperor by acclamation of his Mogul Hordes
Jon,
You say “in his mind,” but what a swamp of weeds and muck it must be.
Yes, a person with a very rich fantasy life, a bit like Reagan, who always viewed himself on the set of movie he himself produced — but far more delusional and dangerous.
VERY funny, Diane!
Death sentence would be nice.
Now you’re talkin’ !
I honestly do not expect Trump supporters to desert him over this description. His supporters would indeed let him commit murder, not just of some individuals, but of representative government in general. If the judicial system cannot put him and his lies on trial, we are stuck with him until he dies. His ideas, however, will live on like the ideas of any extremist philosophy.
Roy, yes, it 45 did say that early on–that he could commit murder in the middle of the street & get away w/it.
Well, how many Americans died of COVID during those months it knew about COVID but kept it to itself (well, & Carl Bernstein)?
In the future all federal buildings will be equipped with magatometers to keep the magats out.
I was once of the view that prolonging the focus on January 6 would be counterproductive, that it would change no minds and keep Trump in the spotlight, when instead we should be trying to move on. But I changed my mind. I think Garland needs to charge Trump with whatever he can charge him with and prosecute him.
I don’t know exactly what Trump did yet—a lot of the testimony that’s been presented has been hearsay and double hearsay and none has been cross-examined, and a fuller or more complicated picture might arise at trial. But that’s what trials are for, and I think we know enough to know that Trump should be criminally charged. To not charge him would send the message that there is literally nothing a President cannot do, that a President is absolutely above the law.
The fact that there is literally nothing a President cannot do was established when Dubya lied us into a war that killed at least a million people, secretly rendered people to black sites, tortured them, indefinitely detained people without charges, spied on Americans and eliminated habeas corpus. And further cemented when Obama due-process free assassinated American citizens, including 16 year old ones. Anyone who thinks Trump will be prosecuted is naive and not paying attention. We must look forward, not backward, mainly because glass houses.
“We must look forward, not backward, mainly because glass houses.”
Wow. Now there’s a philosophy to live by.
Yeah, I acted like a real a-**** once. Therefore, I should never object to anyone else acting like one.
GregB,
“We must look forward, not backward” says the person who invokes something that a democrat said 30 or 40 years ago that “proves” that they are a racist because everything that person has done since is irrelevant.
And “free assassinated American citizens” says the person who thinks that Putin is justified bombing a shopping mall in Ukraine – a country that has posed absolutely no threat to Russia – because of “nazi Ukrainians”.
Do you understand her logic, GregB?
Is her point that we must allow the far right Republicans carte blanche to destroy our democracy because G W Bush lied to us about Iraq?
I think we should look in both directions because we learn about the present and future by studying the past. That said, Trump and family need to be severely punished. We should nonetheless push for that as civic participants. Unfortunately, I do not think they will end up with any serious and severe consequences.
FLERP,
You do know a few things for certain about January 6.
1. You saw him
Speak to the mob that he summoned by tweet.
2. You heard him urge the mob to March to the Capitol and “fight like hell.”
3. You have heard him claim on many occasions that the election was fraudulent and rigged.
4. You have seen that 60+ judges have rejected the court cases that his team brought sue to lack of evidence.
5. You saw what he did while a mob rampaged through the Capitol: nothing.
What more do you expect to see?
I think Garland will need more than those five facts to convict Trump of sedition.
He should have joined the mob, as he wanted to, and broken windows.
It appears that Garland may be continuing to build a case while the hearings pave the way for public acceptance.
Diane,
Well-said.
It’s the double standard where Trump can shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and there just isn’t enough evidence to prosecute, with people twisting themselves into knots about how what Trump did might be perfectly legal and you can’t prove he “intended” to kill and you can’t prove the gun didn’t go off on its’ own, etc. etc. etc.
It’s not just Trump. This is the same pattern whenever a favorite of the far right (George Zimmerman, Kyle Rittenhouse) has committed a crime. People focus on the questionable “exonerating” evidence and ignore the wealth of evidence for conviction. (same happened with OJ Simpson trial).
Last month, the supposedly venerable John Durham – handpicked by William Barr to fully investigate the origins of the Russia investigation – prosecuted Michael Sussmann, an attorney who represented the DNC as well as representing other clients in technology.
The NYT was full of articles in the weeks before the Sussmann trial about the massive evidence of Sussmann’s criminality. During the trial the NYT reported on the massive evidence of Sussmann’s criminality.
And that is because when it comes to a Democrat, the NYT and others have the double standard where they ignore the copious evidence that this is a trumped up investigation and amplify the extremely sketchy evidence that a “serious crime” took place.
Trump committed crimes but the double standard is to say that he didn’t commit crimes because we don’t know his motivation for his actions and as long as we don’t know the motivation because he did not put the motivation in writing, we must assume that his motivations were good and there was no crime.
However, perfectly legal actions by Democrats are criminal because they don’t like Republicans, so therefore their motivations are criminal and it doesn’t matter that they didn’t do anything wrong at all,because they sent an e-mail that said they didn’t like Republicans so that means they committed a very serious thought crime that overrides the fact that they took absolutely no action that was wrong.
Ridiculous double standard, which has enables abhorrent behavior by Trump and other Republicans.
(PS, the jury came back with a not guilty verdict decision on Michael Sussmann in very short order. The NYT barely reported it but will surely report that the next prosecution Durham makes against a Democrat is completely justified by the massive evidence of guilt.)
While some of what Hutchinson said was hearsay, the main meat of her testimony– that Trump wanted the magnetometers down so that those with weapons could enter his speech, where he later told people to “fight,” she herself heard Trump say. So not hearsay.
And that’s the most damning evidence of all.
Not only did she hear Trump say that the metal detectors should come down, he said the people with guns didn’t want to hit him.
Who did they want to hurt?
Members of Congress?
Capitol
Police?
Very little of what was said yesterday would qualify as hearsay. She testified to what she heard/experienced herself. The committee is doing an incredible job of painting a picture of corruption and greed. I am embarrassed for any American who still would vote for Trump and/or his minions.
Although it is good to get all of this out in the open, I am not surprised by any of it. The fact that the Secret Service saw weapons, including long guns at the rally, begs the question of why they didn’t intervene. I also find it hard to believe that all of the social media talk of violence prior to the 6th was not evident to our security apparatus. Why did the Capitol Police not better prepare when they were warned of this two days prior? A week prior to 1/6 I messaged a friend in Arlington to encourage him stay away from DC. He told me he had no intention of going into the city. The rising storm was blatantly evident and the result was a failure on the part of Homeland Security. There is a reason why Trump fired much of his National Security team prior to Christmas. 1/6 was the result.
Typo nation’s in corpulent paragraph
Great article
:What, if any consequences, will there be for a man who attempted to overthrow the government and shred the Constitution? And for those who aided and abetted his treason?:
Yes, but that is out of our hands
We DO HAVE CONTROL OVER NOT ELECTING thos.who.were silent, who are STILL SILENT, and who will sit in Congress next January to guarantee findings proceed and.are.carried.ouy by DOJ… and the.public.
1/6 was a consequence of 20 years of lawlessness by Republicans. President 45 watched television and saw his party use its apparatus in Florida to get a presidential election decided by the court instead of the voters. He saw Mitch McConnell refuse to hear President Obama’s Supreme Court nomination and helped fast track his own nomination even closer to an election. He watched the Democrats merely whine. He had plenty of reasons to believe we are a nation of people instead of a nation of laws. Mix all those facts together in an underdeveloped mind, throw in some AR-15s and ketchup, and you get insurrection. Oh, and spears. They used spears too.
I think you are given Trump too much credit. Once the Republican radicals realized what they got, they were happy to have the orange Tasmanian Devil break everything.
Hutchinson’s Word
Her photo, of religious icon status:
Two solemn brown eyes turned upward to the light
Not of an Annunciation, but of might
With her unsmiling gravity, each stratus
Of facial command accented by her suit:
White jacket, symbolizing purity
Over a black form-fitting—sleeveless?—tee
That mourns American values now left moot.
Those eyes, they grip us even as we know
That what she’s viewing is herself as witness
Giving the meek-voiced putsch on video
To a well-known orange-faced monster
whose unfitness
She with her word has proven once and for all:
True courage, a fraction late to engineer his fall.
Her firm yet soft voice voices what she knows,
Helped by the single long-stemmed mic’s black rose.
Did Trump violate any federal statutes? Not an attorney and while everything he’s done is despicable the line between 1St Amendment and truly bad behavior is up to the prosecutors… I would love to see him tried before a DC jury, a jury representative of the DC population…. Imagine the TV ratings …
Obstruction of Justice is a federal crime.
Seditious conspiracy is another.
There are others.
I don’t know whether there is enough evidence to convict.
Bob Shepherd:
I’m eagerly anticipating your posting of the food fight scene from “Animal House.”
This is what it45 has made of The People’s House: a nasty nest of food & fury & utter, callous disrespect for We, The People.”*
As Lawrence O’Donnell, w/the inimitable Mary Trump confirming, yesterday, “a spoiled brat.”
Merrick, please DO your duty ASAP.
*Not to mention the Capitol, also belonging to Us, but not to the thugs & criminals who attempted to wrest it away with violence &
bloodshed.
It’s a free for all. Enemies devouring enemies, allies devouring allies, and allies devouring enemies and enemies devouring allies I’m afraid more and more of those groups don’t know who to identify with other than “me, myself, and I”.
It’s a rootin’ tootin’ American grab-a-thon . . . Let the games begin.
I am so afraid that nothing will happen, no consequence, to a president who committed treason. He has lied, cheated, and stole, over and over…yet nothing happens to him. He is to blame for those who died during an attempted coup. If he isn’t tried and found guilty, then there is no justice.
Sooxie, agreed.
I liked this paragraph in an Atlantic article today:
Some good points in this, but I don’t agree with the main idea because it does diminish the gravity. The coup’s failure had nothing to do with Trump’s so-called “laziness”. Trump worked very hard to make it happen. It almost happened and the fact that it didn’t had nothing to do with Trump supposedly being “lazy”. Trump works hard whenever he WANTS something and he is lazy only when it is doing something where he doesn’t see a direct and desirable benefit for himself.
The coup failed because Mike Pence chose his highest self-interest and his highest self-interest happened to coincide with not doing what Trump ordered him to do. Pence was wavering as he couldn’t decide if his self-interest lay in doing what Trump wanted or not. Maybe it really was Luttig, the conservative legal scholar, who should get credit because when Pence consulted him, Luttig told Pence IN NO UNCERTAIN TERMS that Pence did not have the authority. That’s really why the sycophant Pence didn’t do it – he was afraid of putting himself in legal jeopardy. If Luttig had been more wishy washy in a NYT journalist kind of way and given more wishy-washy counsel like “I don’t believe you have the right, but I can see that other people might believe you do have that right based on their own interpretation of the Constitution”, I believe Pence would have done what Trump wanted.
Trump is not “adverse” to risk! My goodness he did things that no other politician in many decades would have risked. He doesn’t associate breaking norms or breaking the law with “personal risk” and never has.
Risk isn’t relevant to Trump because he never has any consequences for his actions that he couldn’t buy off or brush off. Whether it’s some fine or bankruptcy or Susan Collins wagging her finger at him while she does his bidding, Trump never has consequences. The so-called liberal media bends over backward to explain in the way I pointed out above that maybe Trump didn’t commit a crime when he shot someone on Fifth Avenue because this right wing sycophant presented as an upright and honorable person says that is a valid view. If Trump suffers the same “tut tuts” whether he uses vile language to disparage a disabled person or immigrant or blatantly lies or breaks the law, Trump doesn’t feel risk. That’s why he boasted he could shoot someone on Fifth Ave. It’s not risky to him because he believes he will never have consequences beyond the “tut tuts” that he brushes off.
Luttig wasn’t wishy washy. I believe if he had been, Pence would have done Trump’s bidding.
FLERP, that paragraph was written before Cassidy Hutchinson testified that Trump wanted to go with the marchers (by car) to the Capitol. It was a matter of luck that the mob didn’t break into the Senate and House while the delegates were inside. They escaped by only minutes. At one point, Pence was 40’ from the mob. It could have been a massacre.
No, the first paragraph of the article discusses the Hutchinson testimony.
The excerpt reads as though it was written before she testified. She made clear that Trump wanted to be in the Capitol to lead the coup, not sitting home watching it on TV.
It was not a stupid coup. It came frighteningly close to succeeding. Think how close the terrorists were to entering the chambers while members of Congress were inside, some cowering on the floor. But for the grace of —-, it might have been a bloodbath.