As Trump is arraigned, Republicans honor the insurrectionists
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Donald Trump could not have asked for a nicer arraignment-day celebration.
During the very same hour in which the former president surrendered to federal authorities in Miami, his Republican allies in the House were, in their most visible and official way yet, embracing as heroes and martyrs the people who sacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in hopes of overturning Trump's election defeat.
In the Capitol complex, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), with sidekick Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and four other far-right lawmakers, held a "hearing" that honored participants in the riot, family members of Jan. 6 rioters and organizers of the attempted overthrow of the 2020 vote.
Technically, Gaetz couldn't call such a hearing, because he isn't a committee chairman. But House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who is trying to win back the support of extremists such as Gaetz, let it happen anyway.
Gaetz did his all to make the proceedings look official. There were congressional seals on his nameplate and on the big screen behind him. A meeting room in the Capitol visitor center was arranged to appear like a committee room, with lawmakers facing the witnesses. Gaetz advertised the "field hearing" as part of how "the 118th Congress is investigating the weaponization of the federal government."
He impersonated a chairman - "you are recognized," "thank you for your testimony," "I'll recognize myself [for] questions," "her time has expired" - and the others played along ("thank you for the opportunity to testify," "I yield back"). Gaetz said testimony could be used "for the official record [of the] House" or for "work in the Judiciary Committee, upon which I serve, or the Oversight Committee." C-SPAN carried the proceedings live.
The invited witnesses?
- The wife of Ronald McAbee, who is awaiting trial for allegedly attacking a police officer and dragging him into the mob while wearing a black vest that said "SHERIFF."
lUnderwear model John Strand, sentenced to two years and eight months for being part of the mob that breached the Capitol on Jan. 6 and pushed past police officers.
lActivist Brandon Straka, sentenced to home detention and probation and fined for his Jan. 6 actions.
lThe aunt of Matthew Perna; Perna killed himself while awaiting sentencing for his role in breaching the Capitol.
lEd Martin, an organizer of the "Stop the Steal" effort leading up to Jan. 6.
lAnd Jeffrey Clark, the Trump Justice Department official who tried to get states to toss the election results.
The lawmakers hailed them all.
"To all of you, my condolences," said Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), who added tenderly that "you know how I feel about Ashli" Babbitt, the woman police shot as she breached the last line of defense protecting lawmakers in the House chamber.
"This is heartbreaking," added Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), "the way you all have been treated."
Greene added "my deepest sympathy for each of you, and all the pain and suffering that you've all had to go through because of this government." She told them that they were the victims of "sick, evil people" and that she and other lawmakers had a "constitutional duty to object to Joe Biden's fraudulent electoral college votes because we all believed that the election had been stolen."
Gaetz opened the hearing with a video suggesting FBI culpability in the Jan. 6 attack. He claimed he "became aware of evidence" that the Justice Department had evidence of "fraud in the election" but Trump Attorney General "Bill Barr was suppressing evidence."
Gosar blamed the attack on "people undercover, whether it be antifa, FBI, whatever." Norman suggested that the FBI was framing people who weren't involved in the attack.
Rep. Troy Nehls (R-Tex.) offered his view that people in charge in the Capitol (Democrats, presumably) "hid the intelligence" showing that an attack was coming. "It's like they wanted this to happen." Nehls added that "I believe Ashli Babbitt was murdered that day," and he said he hopes Trump will return to power and send the officer who shot her before a grand jury.
From the witness table came howls of "wrongful conviction" and "fascism." From the dais came a cry of "tyranny." From both came attacks on judges, juries and prosecutors. Audience members were wearing T-shirts saying rioters had been "murdered by Capitol police." In the hallway, keeping the peace, were two Capitol Police officers, guarding the people accusing them of murder.
Straka, who on Jan. 6 yelled "go, go, go" to the mob as they tried to breach the Capitol and "take it, take it" when rioters grabbed a shield from a police officer, "testified" to Gaetz's panel that "we, the defendants of Jan. 6, need to be able to have some sort of voice."
And now they have that voice: the feckless House Republican leaders who let last week's abomination occur.
In the Senate, Republican leaders have voiced little support for Trump, with GOP whip John Thune (S.D.) calling the charges "very serious" and Sen. John Cornyn (Tex.) calling them "not good."
But in the House, McCarthy has shown no such fortitude, hewing closely to the Fox News assessment of the situation, as expressed in an on-screen "news alert" last week: "Wannabe dictator speaks at the White House after having his political rival arrested."
McCarthy began by calling the indictment a "brazen weaponization of power" and a "grave injustice." He threatened to block funding for a new FBI headquarters in retaliation. Last week, he accused Biden of stealing classified documents from a secure facility, and he said Trump's handling of documents (piled in a bathroom) was superior to Biden's (in a garage) because "a bathroom door locks."
Will Trump avail himself of the privacy-lock defense? And will anybody have the heart to tell McCarthy that garage doors have locks? Or that bathroom doors lock only from the inside?
McCarthy is acting, as he often does, out of weakness. Taking an honorable position on Trump, as his Senate counterparts did, would antagonize the far right and could topple his historically weak speakership.
And so, there is nobody to tell the looniest members of his caucus to take it down a notch - just as there was nobody to tell Gaetz et alia not to hold a "hearing" glorifying insurrectionists.
There is nobody, for example, to tell Rep. Clay Higgins to cut it out. The Louisiana Republican, who has militia ties and previously threatened violence on social media, tweeted this message about Trump's arraignment in Miami: "This is a perimeter probe from the oppressors. Hold. rPOTUS has this. Buckle up. 1/50K know your bridges. Rock steady calm. That is all."
Most won't recognize such QAnon codes: "rPOTUS" means Trump is the "real" president, 1/50K is a military map scale, and "know your bridges" is a reference to preparing attack points, author Jeff Sharlet, an authority on extremism, has explained.
Scary? Now consider that this dangerous hooligan is the chairman of the border security subcommittee of the House Homeland Security Committee.
For a group purporting to be concerned about the "weaponization of government," House Republicans sure seem intent on turning their own corner of the federal government into a tactical nuke.
On the same day as Trump's arraignment, far-right first-term representative Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), previously best known for her creatively written résumé, introduced a "privileged resolution" to censure and fine Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) $16 million for his role in leading Trump's first impeachment. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise promptly pledged to "help it pass" - and put it on the floor Wednesday afternoon.
Luna, full of confidence that her attack on her senior colleague would prevail, told Politico's Olivia Beavers before the vote that she was acting against Schiff "at the suggestion of a member of leadership."
Scalise, GOP whip Tom Emmer (Minn.) and GOP Conference Chair Elise Stefanik (N.Y.) all voted with Luna. Alas for her, 20 Republicans retained more integrity than their leaders and joined with Democrats to kill Luna's censure gambit.
It was a temporary reprieve for good sense. Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) last week threatened to use the same "privileged-resolution" procedure to bring articles of impeachment against President Biden to the House floor. She joins a crowded impeach-Biden field: At least 11 House Republicans have introduced or co-sponsored impeachment articles against the president.
But first comes the impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. The proceedings began last week. They're just not allowed to call it "impeachment" yet.
"We haven't even gotten to that word," Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mark Green (R-Tenn.) said at a news conference Wednesday, making quotation marks with his fingers.
Green was unveiling the GOP's don't-call-it- impeachment inquiry, a "five-phase deep dive" authorized by McCarthy that would prove Mayorkas "has been willfully derelict" and "disregarded his oath." Explained Green: "We're going to get more information about the failures of this secretary, and when we're done we'll make a recommendation to the Judiciary Committee."
It's yet another move by McCarthy to placate the hard right. Reps. Pat Fallon (Tex.), Andy Biggs (Ariz.), Greene and Higgins have introduced articles of impeachment with a combined 68 co-sponsors. But Republicans don't have the votes to impeach - in part because they don't have the goods on Mayorkas.
Illegal crossings of the southern border have dropped 70 percent from their record highs, despite the end of pandemic border restrictions. That's due in part to toughened Biden administration policies, including restrictions on asylum. Heightened enforcement has also led to the seizure of record amounts of fentanyl.
Still, Green kicked off the proceedings with a Trumpian flourish. "Murderers released into the United States! Rapists released into the United States!" he shouted in the House television studio. "One-hundred-seven thousand dead Americans ... Alejandro Mayorkas's policies are the cause of all of this!"
Disagreement with Mayorkas's - and therefore Biden's - policies doesn't qualify as "high crimes and misdemeanors." Those trying to weaponize the government against Mayorkas are going to need a better weapon.
Remember when House Republicans cared about the federal debt? That was so two weeks ago.
During the debt ceiling standoff, McCarthy said he was fighting to relieve the crushing burden of the federal debt on future generations, insisting "it's got to end now."
But last week, the House Ways and Means Committee passed a three-part bill that would, over the next three years, add $325 billion to the federal debt, according to calculations made by Congress's Joint Committee on Taxation. That would more than wipe out the $186.1 billion saved over the same period by the debt deal - which Republicans had nearly tanked the economy to achieve just two weeks earlier.
"Republicans, including those on this committee, held our entire U.S. economy hostage, purportedly because you're concerned about Washington spending and our national debt," Rep. Mike Thompson (D-Calif.) protested at the day-long markup of the bills. "But now, less than two weeks later, you brought before us a bill that would add over a trillion dollars to our national debt." The trillion-dollar figure comes from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a think tank that calculated that if temporary tax cuts in the bill were made permanent (as often occurs), the bill would actually add $1.1 trillion to the debt through 2033.
How to explain this sudden change of heart about the federal debt? Rep. Greg Murphy (R-N.C.) tried objectivism.
"I'm slogging through right now ... a 1957 book written by a lady named Ayn Rand, called 'Atlas Shrugged,'" said Murphy, who apparently just discovered the 20th-century champion of self-interest. He cautioned that "it's very laborious" but "a wonderful lesson."
Perhaps he was taken by Rand's admonition to "never live for the sake of another man." That could account for the House GOP's approach to this year's appropriations bills.
McCarthy, in one of his many efforts to placate the far-right dissidents in his caucus, last week agreed to jettison the spending levels he and Biden agreed to in the debt deal. House Republicans will now try to slash spending even further - essentially reneging on the agreement after just two weeks and putting the government on course for a shutdown this fall.
After an appalling spate of mass shootings, the House finally took action on guns last week. Republicans passed, largely along party lines, a bill making it easier to obtain firearms.
Specifically, they voted to strike down new regulations on "stabilizing braces" that make handguns more powerful and deadly - and have been used in several recent massacres.
The primary sponsor of the legislation was Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.), a gun dealer by trade. If that conflict of interest weren't jarring enough, the Republican floor leader for part of the debate was Rep. Thomas Massie (Ky.), known for his Christmas card showing each member of his family holding an AR-style weapon.
Massie, railing against gun-free zones, told the House about a former aide whose husband was shot in a bar. She couldn't fire back, as she had left her own gun in her car because "the sign said 'No Guns Inside' because they served alcohol."
An incredulous Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) took issue with Massie "suggesting that it's okay for people to carry guns into bars when they are drunk."
Added McGovern: "This place is crazier than usual."
All week, it was demonstrably so.
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The Republicans pretended that a "hearing" was an official congressional hearing, when it wasnt.
And these people belong in power?
House Repubs are showing that they aren't ready to govern. There only real accomplishments are some limits on federal spending and stopping much of the remaining Biden agenda, but it's not forward looking. It's more about show & antics than substance & seriousness.