Exclusive: Jan. 6 Committee Plans to Humiliate MAGA Lawmakers Who Cowered During Capitol Attack
Category: News & Politics
Via: tessylo • 2 years ago • 45 commentsBy: Adam Rawnsley, Nikki McCann Ramirez and Asawin Suebsaeng, Rolling Stone
Exclusive: Jan. 6 Committee Plans to Humiliate MAGA Lawmakers Who Cowered During Capitol Attack
january-6-dc-2021-1800 - Credit: Jon Cherry/Getty Images
The Jan. 6 committee plans to use its Thursday night hearing to call out insurrection-friendly lawmakers who cowered during the Capitol attack but have since downplayed the insurrection’s severity, according to two sources familiar with the committee’s planning.
“They have plans to paint a really striking picture of how some of Trump’s greatest enablers of his coup plot were — no matter what they’re saying today — quaking in their boots and doing everything shy of crying out for their moms,” one source tells Rolling Stone . “If any of [these lawmakers] were capable of shame, they would be humiliated.”
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Throughout its hearings, the committee has made extensive use of photo and video evidence, including, at times, footage of lawmakers reacting to a mob of Donald Trump supporters who fought through a police line to break into the Capitol.
The committee has at times switched plans at the last minute, and it remains unclear which specific lawmakers the committee could call out. But at least some Republicans have already had their attempts to downplay or justify the attempted coup undone by footage from the day of the attack. When Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Ga) claimed the insurrection “a normal tourist visit,” social media users quickly located photos of the Georgia Republican gasping in terror and hiding behind an armed Capitol police officer pointing a handgun at a barricaded entrance to the Senate floor.
In the 18 months since the insurrection, Republican lawmakers have tried to whitewash the insurrection through a series of contradictory talking points . Republicans have alternately downplayed the attack by calling it “ a peaceful protest ,” claimed it was violent but that the violence was carried out solely by nonexistent “antifa” at the Capitol or federal informants , or that Democrats were to blame for failing to adequately defend the Capitol against the protesters they variously claim weren’t violent or a threat.
Republicans like Reps. Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Paul Gosar have gone so far as to cast alleged rioters held in pretrial detention as unjustly accused political prisoners .
The bulk of the Thursday night hearing is expected to focus on Trump’s actions during the insurrection, including whether he took any action to defuse the riot at a time when lawmakers were under attack. But using photos and footage to slap down MAGA lawmakers’ claims of a “tourist visit” from “peaceful patriots” is part of a broader effort to bring reality to bear on a fictitious, pro-Trump reimagining of Jan. 6.
That mythology, peddled widely in conservative media, claims Trump and his allies planned a peaceful rally to highlight credible reports of systemic election fraud, exercising their First Amendment rights in an effort to protect democracy. In that warped telling, the peaceful demonstrations were hijacked by a small number of violent extremists with no connection to Trump or his team. And, as the lie goes, Democrats have since wildly overstated the violence as a political ploy.
Through interviews with more than 1,000 individuals and reviews of more than 125,000 records , the Jan. 6 committee has debunked every part of that narrative. Instead, the committee has demonstrated that Trump attempted to steal an election he was repeatedly told he’d lost. And that his efforts to steal it included directing a wildly unconstitutional phony electors scheme — and priming his supporters for a Capitol attack.
As Trump spoke at his pre-planned rally near the White House, he called for a march on the U.S. Capitol, bolstering a crowd of people that violently clashed with law enforcement. Testimony given to the committee indicated that Trump and members of the administration were aware of the potential for violence, and witnesses have alleged that Trump went so far as to ask for security at his Ellipse rally to be loosened so armed individuals could enter the crowd. Trump’s team has attempted to distance itself from any of the Capitol events, but the committee has revealed that the former presidents call for his supporters’ march was premeditated.
The committee obtained a draft of an unsent tweet in which Trump teased a march to the Capitol following his speech at the Ellipse. “I will be making a Big Speech at 10 a.m. on January 6th at the Ellipse (South of the White House),” read the draft tweet, preserved by the National Archives. “Please arrive early, massive crowds expected. March to the Capitol after. Stop the steal!”
The committee also displayed a text exchange from Jan. 4 between White House Ellipse rally organizer Kylie Kremer and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell in which the pair discussed a secret plan to have Trump call for protesters to march to a second location, either the Supreme Court or Capitol, on Jan. 6. In the exchange Kremer urged Lindell to keep the plans secret, since they did not have permits for the march.
Rolling Stone this spring reported that top Trump officials held a phone call with Kremer in which they actively planned for the march.
Trump’s team has also sought to portray Trump as opposed to the Capitol violence, but the committee revealed he actively resisted efforts to quell the violence — including by refusing to call their actions “illegal” when prompted to do so.
In her bombshell testimony before the committee , former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson revealed that she had drafted a statement for President Trump asking protesters who had entered the Capitol “illegally” to leave. According to Hutchinson, former white House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows took the draft statement to Trump, who scratched out the word “illegally” and refused to issue it. Hutchinson was told there would be no “further action on that statement.”
Indeed, Trump has since continually considered ways to lessen the legal consequences for the Capitol rioters . Hutchinson also revealed that Trump wanted to include language in his Jan. 7 speech about pardoning his supporters who stormed the Capitol, and that Meadows agreed with the inclusion of such language. According to previous testimony given by Hutchinson, the pardon offer was ultimately removed from the speech on the advice of the White House counsel’s office.
The Jan. 6 insurrection was the highest profile part of a broader effort to steal the 2020 election, but it was far from the only way Trump and his team tried to overturn the results. The committee has revealed Trump took a “direct and personal role” in efforts to pressure states to change their results or appoint phony electors who’d contravene voters by throwing their support to Trump.
In the committee’s fourth hearing, lawmakers described Trump pressuring individual state legislators to go back into session and declare him the true winner of the 2020 election. Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, was told by the former president to “find” the votes necessary to give him the state.
A separate scheme was concocted by Trump lawyer John Eastman to send two slates of alternate electors, declaring Trump the winner, to the congressional certification of the electoral college vote and having Vice President Pence use the false electors in the vote. Eastman knew the scheme was illegal, and admitted so in front of Trump days before the electoral college certification. The committee revealed on June 21 that this scheme culminated in an attempt by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis) to deliver the fake electors to Pence on Jan. 6 .
None of this was in response to credible information about systemic election fraud, and Trump knew that — or at least he would have, had he listened to multiple high-level members of his administration.
During its first hearing, the committee played recorded testimony from Trump’s former Attorney General Bill Barr. In his testimony Barr told the committee that he had been clear with the former President that his claims that the 2020 election had been stolen from him were “bullshit.” Barr would go on to testify that attempts, by him and other advisors, to convince Trump that the 2020 election was legitimate were futile, and described Trump as being “detached from reality.”
Former acting deputy attorney general Richard Donoghue also testified to the committee that he unsuccessfully attempted to reach through to President Trump : “I tried to, again, put this in perspective and try to put it in very clear terms to the president. I said something to the effect of, ‘Sir, we’ve done dozens of investigations, hundreds of interviews. The major allegations are not supported by the evidence developed.’”
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Are they real? How many fakes on Twitter? Only Twitter knows.
That's not Twitter. DUH It must be from the fucking moron's 'truth social' site.
The steaming pile of shit has less admirers than before. Only 18.9 thousand voted up the moronic fat turds' hateful lies. That's 18.9 thousand too many.
Elon Musk was just appealing to the rabid trumpturd base. He never had any intention of buying Twitter.
Twitter may be a big shell.
Stop deflecting and denying and projecting and lying.
And that is why Musk is backing out of the deal. That's going to be interesting when Twitter has to provide the number in court.
Must have been a heck of a lot, cause they refused to tell Elon Musk how many.
Please show how Vic is deflecting and denying and projecting and lying. I don't see that he has done any such thing here.
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just like it's former biggest twit...
Only they know. A judge recently did Twitter a favor by agreeing with them to rush to trial. The longer this goes on the more likely we find out about how many fakes on Twitter. As far as Musk goes, it took too long to acquire Twitter. Share prices have gone the wrong way at both Twitter & Tesla. The deal is a lot more expensive.
It's not official until we get that live seed going.
Is he ready?
One of Peter Navarro's personal assistants in the White House freaked out after he was forced to take the fifth many times at his Jan6 testimony. I wonder what he did to require the fifth?
In any case he went on a right wing social site after and ranted about how "anti-white" the committee is and calling Cassidy Hutchinson a "hoe".
All you conservatives must be so proud of your team.
I happen to agree, for the first time, with the deceitful Andrew Weissmann, who recently told the DOJ to go at this case from the top down rather than the bottom up.
Trump is the target, let's get him.
What are you expecting from tonight's prime time tv hearing? It may be the last one. Will there be a criminal referral as was once promised?
Or will it be more theatre to be followed up with a "report" dropped just before the midterms?
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He was "forced" in the sense that the truth wasnt an option for him. Otherwise he would have told the truth.
People constantly have to explain the simplest concepts to you.
I am not that interested in whether or not Trump gets indicted, simply because it does not determine the truth of the allegations against him. The committee has already proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that Trump is not worthy to hold any future office. What will MAGA do?
The idea that Trump might actually be the GOP nominee in the next presidential election is perhaps the strangest thing that has ever happened in this country.
lol. Be glad this isnt my group, because you would be shitcanned for trolling.
So that's always the case when people take the 5th. Including these:
I believe it was Murray Humphreys who put the 5th on the map. (of Chicago fame)
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Stop projecting, deflecting, denying, and lying.
J6 Committee Reportedly Set To Air Blooper Reel Of Donald Trump Struggling To Condemn His Mob Of Supporters In His Post-Riot Video Address During Today’s Public Hearing
Just yesterday, we reported on the bombshell news from the Washington Post that the January 6th House Select Committee is set to air damning new video footage evidence during tomorrow’s primetime public hearing, as part of their ongoing and mounting investigation into the deadly January 6th Capitol attack and the corrupt ex-president’s personal role in inciting the fatal violence.
Now, the Post is out with more details and information on the aforementioned footage, reporting today that the J6 panel will air outtakes footage from Donald Trump’s infamous post-riot video address during this evening’s public hearing, in which the now-former president will reportedly be seen struggling and acting reluctant to condemn his mob of supporters over the violent Capitol insurrection.
The blooper reel will come straight from Trump’s now notorious speech that he delivered on video recording the day after the deadly Capitol attack perpetrated by his mob of violent supporters in the name of his Big Lie. That video-recorded speech served as the apparent first instance of Trump publicly committing to an “orderly transition” following Joe Biden’s presidential election win, though Trump continued to adhere to his unhinged claims of widespread fraud and cheating that ignited the violent Capitol siege in the first place.
CNN has since corroborated the reporting on the matter from the Post, confirming that the January 6th Committee is in possession of those outtakes clips and is expected to publicly air that footage at this evening’s hearing.
From the Washington Post :
The focus of this evening’s hearing is slated to circle around Donald Trump’s blatant inaction against the violent Capitol attack and his supporters while the insurrection was taking place. Should these outtakes clips truly be aired tonight, they will serve as further cold, hard proof that Donald Trump had no desire to condemn or stop the violence that was taking place in his name.
Reporting also indicates that the House Committee is slated to argue that Trump wasn’t just reluctant to act against the violence during the Capitol siege, but was actually welcoming it as he watched it transpire in real time.
Isn't it time y'all stood up straight 'n tall and did your own 'dirty' work or is it that y'all in desperate need of a scapegoat?
I'll leave it to the pro's.
Did you not do that already when it came to lawyers ...
And the committee has some of the most activist lawyers since William Moses Kunstler!
We shall see.
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Personally, I have never been fond of inquisitions but it sounds like you are.
Inquisitions.
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That's because ....
And it will probably remain only in your dreams.
We can add traitor and seditionist to the list.
Has he been tried and convicted in a actual court of law? No? Well gee, then according our criminal justice system he is still innocent until proven guilty in a court of law of his peers. And I mean a real one rather than the kangaroo courts of public opinion many on the hard core liberal left are so fond of engaging in these days. Nice try, but no kewpie doll on that one.
One of the highlights of the hearing so far was when they showed the picture of the stupid asshole Hawley giving his fascist salute to the mob, and then they showed a video of him running for his worthless life.
It seems like only yesterday
Oh look! Only one hand cuffed behind her back!
Same cop with the "Why did I have to get stuck with her?" look on his face.