The House Select Committee on Investigating Trump’s Decay into the Jan. 6 Attack and the Return of the Democratic Prefect: Implications for 2024 Elections

The House panel investigating the Jan. 6 attack closed its hearing on Thursday by taking a vote on whether to subpoena former President Donald Trump to testify before them.

The vice chairwoman of the committee previously said the committee was in discussions with Trump’s attorneys about testifying under oath. But it remains unclear whether those discussions will lead to him sitting for a deposition.

“We are obligated to seek answers directly from the man who set this all in motion,” she said. “And every American is entitled to those answers, so we can act now to protect our republic.”

It’s unclear whether Trump will abide by the committee’s subpoena, issued on Oct. 21 after its most recent hearing, but Committee Vice Chair Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., said they have been speaking with Trump’s lawyers. During a televised forum at Cleveland State University Tuesday, Cheney told PBS journalist Judy Woodruff that the former president is obligated to comply.

Since everything about Trump’s political career has been unprecedented, it’s hardly surprising that his political reemergence is posing new questions with the potential to further challenge and damage the country’s political institutions.

Trump dropped his clearest hint yet Saturday of a new White House run at a moment when he’s on a new collision course with the Biden administration, the courts and facts.

Trump returned to the center of US politics after losing reelection in 2020, and a string of confrontations has allowed him to do so. It’s likely to deepen polarization in an already deeply divided nation. And Trump’s return to the spotlight probably means next month’s midterm elections and the early stages of the 2024 presidential race will be rocked by his characteristic chaos.

Those controversies also show that given the open legal and political loops involving the ex-President, a potential 2024 presidential campaign rooted in his claims of political persecution could create even more upheaval than his four years in office.

And while fierce differences are emerging between Democrats and Republicans over policy on the economy, abortion, foreign policy and crime in the 2022 midterms – while concerns about democracy often rank lower for voters – there is every chance the coming political period revolves mostly around the ex-President’s past and future.

In a separate probe, the department is investigating whether Trump broke the law by hoarding highly classified information at his Mar-a-Lago resort. Any prosecutions of the ex-President and those around him would set off an extraordinary political conflagration especially if Trump – already the GOP frontrunner for 2024 – is by then a declared candidate for president.

The men and women of Trump are doing a lot of activity. His political guru Steve Bannon, whose own grassroots movement is seeking to infiltrate school boards and local election machinery, is vowing to expose the Biden “regime” in an appeal against a prison sentence handed down last week for defying a congressional subpoena. Lindsey Graham is calling on the supreme court to block an attempt to have him testify in the investigation of Donald Trump.

Donald Trump, AZTV7, and the Trump Organization: a serial propagator of voter fraud lies in the primaries 2020 and 2020

One of the ex-president’s favorites for governor in Arizona, a serial spreader of voter fraud lies, is raising doubts about the election system. Lake told AZTV7 on Sunday that it was probably not going to be fair.

The New York Post published an article last week based on an interview with the number three leader in the House, who stated that impeachment of Biden was a possibility. Nancy Mace of South Carolina told CNN that she didn’t want to see a repeat of what happened after Trump was impeached twice. She said she was against the process being “weaponized.” She replied that Biden had committed impeachable offenses and that was something that would have to be investigated.

An already pro-Trump Republican presence in Washington is likely to expand after the midterms. Scores of Trump-endorsed candidates are running on a platform of his 2020 election fraud falsehoods, raising questions over whether they will accept results should they lose their races in just over two weeks.

On another politically sensitive front, the Trump Organization’s criminal tax fraud and grandy larceny trial begins in Manhattan on Monday. The trial of the ex- President could impact his business empire and cause him to make another claim that he is being treated unfairly because of his political beliefs. In a separate civil case, the New York Attorney General filed a $250 million lawsuit against Trump, his three adult children and the Trump Organization, accusing them of tax and insurance fraud.

Democrats have made their own attempts to return Trump to the political spotlight. The campaign for Republican Presidential Nominee Donald Trump tried to frighten suburban voters by warning pro-Trump candidates are dangerous to democracy because of President Joe Biden’s comparison of their followers to fascists.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/24/politics/donald-trump-circus-analysis/index.html

The Definitive Testability of the Ex-President’s Derelictions of Duty in the First Five Years of the Republican Presidency

As voters prepare to go to the polls, skyrocketing inflation and spikes in gasoline prices could make them less likely to vote for a political party.

The ex-president told his supporters at a rally in Texas on Saturday that he will probably have to run for president again.

“It may take multiple days, and it will be done with a level of rigor and discipline and seriousness that it deserves,” Cheney told NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

The debate won’t be his first against Joe Biden, or the circus, or the food fight. This is a far too serious set of issues.”

The committee’s letter explained why it believes Trump was behind the efforts to overturn the election.

The committee used testimony in its highly produced presentations, as well as in depositions and on video. The most sympathetic witnesses have appeared in person. While this has helped create a powerful narrative that has painted a picture of shocking derelictions of duty by Trump on January 6, it has also deprived viewers of seeing witnesses under cross examination. This has made it difficult to assess whether the committee’s case would stand up to more rigorous evidentiary requirements in a court of law.

The prospect of video testimony over an intense period of days or hours is likely to be unappealing to the former President because it would be harder for him to dictate the terms of the exchanges and control how his testimony might be used.

If there is evidence a crime was committed, Garland would face a dilemma over whether the national interest lay in implementing the law to its full extent or whether the consequences of prosecuting a former commander in chief in a fractious political atmosphere could tear the country apart.

A decision to charge an ex-president running for a non-consecutive second White House term would undoubtedly cause a firestorm. If there was evidence that a crime was committed, sparing him from accountability would be a bad signal for future presidents.

The committee’s order on Trump’s actions against the Southern Poverty law: a view from a high-profile person’s perspective

Many of the documents the committee wants are on or around January 6, 2021, for example, as well as people with whom the correspondence might have taken place.

If Trump does not cooperate, the committee may make a criminal referral to the Justice Department. When asked about what action the panel would likely take, Cheney said she didn’t want to put the cart before the horse.

The former president will probably don’t produce the documents before end of the day. The committee has been lenient when it comes to deadlines in the past, at least when there’s ongoing communication with a subject’s legal team.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has designated both the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers to be far-right extremists. The committee has ordered Trump turn over conversations that may have taken place between himself and either group from September 2020 to the present.

Other high-profile people found in the committee’s order include Roger Stone, Stephen Bannon, retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, Jeffrey Clark, John Eastman, Rudolph Giuliani and more.

“The committee has been working in a very collaborative way and I would anticipate we won’t have disagreements about that,” she said. “But we’ll have to make those decisions as we come to it.”

The Committee on Investigating the January 6 Insurrection: Deputy Attorney General Carl Nichols to the Deferee Committee on Criminal Contempt of Congress

On the same day that the House committee ordered Trump to turn over the documents and testify, U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols sentenced Steve Bannon, Trump’s political advisor, to four months in prison for criminal contempt of Congress after failing to comply with a different committee subpoena.

The committee did not provide more information about the correspondence from the former President and his counsel.

The Trump lawyers tapped to deal with the committee’s subpoena demands have been coordinating with other members of the former president’s legal team while determining how to proceed, according to a source familiar with the matter.

CNN has learned that the House select committee looking into the January 6 insurrection is considering criminal referrals for at least four individuals, including former President Donald Trump.

The committee has not officially decided whom to refer to the Justice Department for prosecution and for what offenses, sources said. The four individuals who are among those under consideration, and whose names have not been previously reported, provide a window into the panel’s deliberations.

As the DOJ has already undertaken a lengthy investigation into the US Capitol attack and efforts to overturn the 2020 election, the committee has stressed that the criminal referrals are a way of documenting their views for the record.

The committee is expected to decide on criminal referrals on Sunday when they meet virtual, according to the committee chairman.

“I think the more we looked at the body of evidence that we had collected, we just felt that while we’re not in the business of investigating people for criminal activities, we just couldn’t overlook some of them.”

A subcommittee led by a Maryland Democrat is tasked with presenting recommendations for criminal referrals to the full committee on January 6, and they want anyone guilty of criminal activity to be held accountable. We are going to tell that.

The attempt to overthrow a presidential election is a grave offense in terms of the constitution. “Subsidiary to all of that are a whole host of statutory offenses, which support the gravity and magnitude of that violent assault on America.”

Subpoenaed Meadows: Explaining the Trump-Mike Campaign Against the 2020 Election and the Midterm Insurrection

The panel has a vice chair, Republican Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, and a subcommittee chaired by Raskin.

The committee subpoenaed Meadows for documents and testimony in September of last year, and he handed over more than 2,000 text messages he sent and received between Election Day 2020 and Joe Biden’s inauguration. The text messages, which were obtained by CNN, reveal how top Republican Party officials, right-wing figures and even Trump’s family members discussed with Meadows what Trump should say and do after the election and in the middle of the insurrection.

The previous referrals to DOJ for contempt of Congress would not affect the way the panel handles criminal referrals.

“We obviously did contempt of Congress referrals earlier and there’s a whole statutory process for making that happen,” he said. “But you know we will explain our decisions in detail – why we are making certain kinds of referrals for certain people and other kinds for others.”

The revelations that came out of the summer hearing show that Eastman was a central figure in attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. Eastman was integral to the intense pressure campaign that Trump directed at then-Vice President Mike Pence to compel Pence to help carry out a plan to overturn the election results.

The committee walked through how the legal theory that Pence could block the certification of the election was embraced by the former President, despite the fact that the White House and the vice president were opposed to it.

A criminal contempt of Congress referral was made against the former DOJ official because he refused to answer questions at a previous deposition. The referral was never sent to DOJ because on the day the committee voted on the contempt referral, Clark’s lawyer informed the committee that he planned to invoke his Fifth Amendment right to not answer questions on the grounds it may incriminate him.

The panel dedicated much of a June hearing to Clark’s role in Trump’s attempts to weaponize the Justice Department in the final months of his term as part of the plot to overturn the 2020 election and stay in power.

In particular, the committee wanted to know whether Rep. Scott PERRY helped Clark land a job at the White House.

The committee in court documents released text messages that were written by Perry about Clark, as well as CNN reporting on the role he played.

The clip of her deposition that was played at the hearing shows that Cassidy Hutchinson said that he wanted Jeff Clark to take over the Department of Justice.

In May, Giuliani met with the panel for more than nine hours to discuss an attempt to overturn the 2020 election results.

In its initial subpoena, the committee alleges that Giuliani “actively promoted claims of election fraud on behalf of the former President and sought to convince state legislators to take steps to overturn the election results.” Giuliani was in contact with Trump and members of Congress regarding strategies to delay or overturn the results of the election, according to the subpoena.