The House January 6 Subpoena committee: Trump is Oz, and the FBI is poised to make sure he is not a bigot

The dramatic vote to target Trump is seen by many as another theatrical flourish in a set of slickly produced hearings that often looked like a television courtroom drama.

All of those battles have dragged on for years, a timetable that the House January 6 committee doesn’t have. The Justice Department will not publicly engage in any activity this close to an election, and voters could well hand control of the House to Republicans in November.

The committee is trying to make the case that Donald Trump is Oz according to CNN’s John King. “He presents himself as all powerful, but when you look, it’s actually a little guy behind a curtain trying to pull a machine.”

Contempt. The full House, which is controlled by Democrats until at least January, could vote to hold him in contempt of Congress, something it’s done with several other uncooperative witnesses.

There is a prosecution. It is possible for Trump to serve a minimum of 30 days in jail if he is found guilty. According to the House subpoena, a sentencing will be held later this month.

Trump, Burr, Jefferson, and the Supreme Court: Donald Trump in the White House and his Deposition at the Grand Unified Chamber of Commerce

George Sullivan, a critic of Trump and a conservative lawyer, predicted on CNN Thursday that none of that would happen. The marker is what this is about. This is about getting a response from Trump.

The Supreme Court made clear where it stood on Trump’s status as a former president when it ignores his attempt to block the National Archives from sharing information.

It is not clear if the Justice Department will pursue Trump for ignoring a congressional subpoena, but they have a lot of bigger inquiries regarding his treatment of classified documents after he left the White House and his efforts to overturn the election.

Cheney, who serves as vice chair of the House committee, singled out people who invoked the Fifth Amendment or refused to testify rather than elaborate on their communications with Trump on January 6, 2021, including:

Gerald Ford testified about his pardon of former President Richard Nixon before a House subcommittee in 1974.

President Thomas Jefferson declined to appear at former Vice President Aaron Burr’s trial for treason even though he was subpoenaed by then-Chief Justice John Marshall. Jefferson did ultimately provide some documents. burr was found not guilty

The financial documents can be access by New York investigators, according to the Supreme Court. The company of the Donald Trump will go on trial this month on charges of violating tax laws.

A judge ordered him to comply with subpoenas from the New York Attorney General in regards to his business practices. During that deposition, he invoked Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination.

James wanted to get a preliminary injunction against the Trump company because she believed they would keep engaging in fraudulent conduct until trial.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Congressional Investigation of the January 6 Committee Hearing on the Pro-Trump Insurrection at the Capitol

The January 6 committee must finish its work by January 3, 2023 if it is to remain in existence during the next Congress.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was captured on video in a secure location during the insurrection grappling with the implications of the pro-Trump mob’s attack on the Capitol. It also featured almost pitiful accounts of the ex-President’s desperate attempts to avoid publicly admitting he was a loser in 2020 and made a case that his full comprehension of his defeat made his subsequent actions even more heinous.

In roughly three months since the last January 6 committee hearing, the panel has obtained more than 1 million records from the Secret Service, and the panel revealed some of what they learned during Thursday’s hearing.

The leaders of the committee said they needed Trump’s testimony to tell the complete story of January 6 because he was at the center of efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

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

And select committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, argued that Trump “is the one person at the center of the story of what happened on January 6th. So we want to hear from him.”

CNN has additional footage from Fort McNair that was not shown by the committee. On Thursday, CNN will broadcast exclusive footage from the one-hour special of Anderson Cooper. The footage shows Congressional leaders trying to figure out what was happening at the Capitol after they fled, and begging for assistance as they desperately searched for a way to quell the insurrection.

Pelosi talked to the then governor of Virginia about sending reinforcements to the Capitol. Other footage showed Pelosi speaking with the acting Attorney General.

The footage also showed phone calls from Pelosi and Mike Pence, which were made during the emergency response on January 6.

Schumer was shown dressing down Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen. During their heated phone call, Schumer implored Rosen to intervene directly with Trump, and tell Trump to call off the mob. During the call, Pelosi told Rosen that the pro-Trump rioters were “breaking the law… at the instigation of the President of the United States.”

“I think the events at the Capitol, however they occurred, were shocking and it was something that, as I mentioned in my statement, that I could not put aside,” said Chao, one of the former members of Trump’s Cabinet whose recorded testimony lawmakers aired on Thursday.

“And at a particular point, the events were such that it was impossible for me to continue, given my personal values and my philosophy. I came to this country as an immigrant. I believe in this country. I believe in the peaceful transfer of power. I think that we have a democracy. And so I was – it was a decision that I made on my own,” she said.

Hutchinson’s testimony had been some of the most damning against Trump during the summer hearings, as she provided detailed accounts about Trump’s actions on the day of January 6.

I said to Mark, he cannot possibly think that we’re going to pull this off. It was crazy to get that call. He shook his head when he looked at me. He knows it’s over, you know. He knows he lost. Hutchinson told the committee that they are going to keep trying.

Hutchinson said that she watched a conversation where Trump was upset with the Supreme Court for rejecting a lawsuit to overturn the election result.

In an audio clip, Gen. Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that while in the Oval Office, Trump said something to the effect of “We lost, we need to let that issue go to the next guy.”

While there are still questions surrounding erased text messages from Secret Service agents around the insurrection, the panel obtained messages and emails showing the agency receiving warnings before January 6, 2021, about the prospect of violence, as well as real-time reports of weapons in the crowd ahead of Trump’s speech at the Ellipse.

Days before January Trump’s communication adviser, Jason Miller, boasted to Meadows that he “got the base FIRED UP,” and shared a link to a pro-Trump webpage containing hundreds of threatening comments about killing lawmakers if they went ahead with certifying Joe Biden’s legitimate electoral victory, according to a new text message the panel showed Thursday.

The congressman said that the Secret Service had received threats against the vice president, including one that said he would die if he didn’t follow the law.

A Committee Hearing on Trump’s 2020 U.S. Electoral Campaign and the Status of his Role in Mar-a-Lago

According to new evidence the committee revealed on Thursday, Trump devised a plan to declare victory before the votes were counted.

After their conversation on November 3, 2020, Jacob drafted a memo to Short, which the committee said it obtained from the National Archives and presented for the first time on Thursday.

The memo says that the public shouldn’t see the Vice President as having decided questions regarding disputed electoral votes prior to the full development of all relevant facts.

The committee also revealed new emails conservative legal activist Tom Fitton sent to two Trump advisers a few days before the election. An email has a draft of a statement for Trump to make on Election Night.

Committee members interviewed Ginni Thomas last month but ultimately her testimony was not featured as part of the panel’s last hearing before the midterm election.

Her absence was notable because the committee did use testimony from other high-profile witnesses who had just been interviewed.

The House January 6 committee voted to subpoena him after laying bare his depraved efforts to overthrow the 2020 election and his dereliction of duty as his mob invaded the US Capitol.

But the developments that could hurt Trump the most happened off stage. They reflect the extraordinary legal thicket surrounding the ex-President, who has not been charged with a crime, and the distance still left to run for efforts to account for his riotous exit from power and a presidency that constantly tested the rule of law.

It is not surprising that the political career of Trump has never been done before, and that his reappearance is raising some questions regarding the country’s political institutions.

As the House select committee hearing went on, the Supreme Court sent word from across the road that it’s got no interest in getting sucked into Trump’s bid to derail a Justice Department probe into classified material he kept at Mar-a-Lago.

The court turned down his request to intervene, which could have delayed the case. No dissents were noted, including from conservative justices Trump elevated to the bench and whom he often seems to believe owe him a debt of loyalty.

Observational evidence of obstruction of justice in Pence’s investigation of Mar-A-Lago, Florida, on January 6, 2020

For all the political drama that surrounds the continuing revelations over one of the darkest days in modern American history on January 6, it’s the showdown over classified documents that appears to represent the ex-President’s most clear cut and immediate threat of true criminal exposure.

The former President has a point in asking why the panel waited so long to call him. But his obstruction of the investigation and attempts to prevent former aides from testifying means he is on thin ice in criticizing its conduct. And it is not unusual for investigators to build a case before approaching the most prominent potential target of a probe.

Marc Short, a former chief of staff for then-Vice President Mike Pence, was spotted leaving a courthouse in Washington, DC. Short had been compelled to testify to the grand jury for the second time, according to a person familiar with the matter, CNN’s Pamela Brown reported. A former national security aide for Trump was spotted walking into the area where the grand jury is meeting. Patel would not tell reporters what he was doing.

CNN’s Brown had reported late on Wednesday that a Trump employee had told the FBI about being directed by the ex-President to move boxes out of a basement storage room at his Florida club after Trump’s legal team received a subpoena for any classified documents. A staffer at the FBI is shown on video moving the boxes.

This development could suggest a pattern of deception that could lead to an obstruction of justice charge. On the initial search warrant before the FBI showed up at Trump’s home in August, the bureau told a judge there could be “evidence of obstruction” at the resort.

Still, David Schoen, who was Trump’s defense lawyer in his second impeachment, told CNN’s “New Day” that though the details of what happened at Mar-a-Lago raised troubling questions, they did not necessarily amount to a case of obstructing justice.

Those aren’t even the only probes connected to Trump. There is also the matter of yet another investigation in Georgia over attempts by the former President and his allies to overturn the election in a crucial 2020 swing state.

The GOP-controlled Senate Select Committee is a Total ‘BUST’ Exactly What the Ex-President Donald Trump Needs to Swee the Midterms

One day when the seriousness of a crisis can be seen by the vehemence of the rhetoric he uses, Trump came out fighting on Thursday.

After the panel said it would send a subpoena, Trump offered a glimpse of what an appearance before the committee would look like. He wrote a 14-page letter, in which he made many false and debunked claims about election fraud and blasted the members of the panel for their purpose in ruining the lives of hard-working Americans.

“Pres Trump will not be intimidate(d) by their meritless rhetoric or un-American actions. Trump-endorsed candidates will sweep the Midterms, and America First leadership & solutions will be restored,” Budowich wrote on Twitter.

Then the former President weighed in on his Truth Social network with another post that failed to answer the accusations against him, but that was clearly designed to stir a political reaction from his supporters.

“Why didn’t the Unselect Committee ask me to testify months ago? Why did they wait until the very end, the final moments of their last meeting? Because the Committee is a total ‘BUST,’” Trump wrote.

If Trump doesn’t testify, it could take months to follow a similar path. The justice department has a January 6 probe and it is not certain whether this is a good investment. With Republicans poised to take over the House majority after the elections, there is a good chance that the committee will be swept into history.

The uproar that is coming to a head underscore that the nation and its legal systems are still far from handling and moving on from the shock and awe of Trump’s presidency. GOP Rep. Liz Cheney, the vice chair of the House select committee investigating January 6, 2021, alluded to that reality when she said on Sunday that the panel wants to avoid Trump turning his potential testimony into a “circus.”

“With every effort to excuse or justify the conduct of the former President, we chip away at the foundation of our Republic,” said the Wyoming lawmaker, who won’t be returning to Congress after losing her primary this summer to a Trump-backed challenger.

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 chairman noted in his opening remarks that the panel could present evidence and hold a committee vote on further investigative actions, which is a way of saying that it was a formal business meeting.

The House Speaker’s Report on Trump’s Deflection-Memory Trial Revealed by a U.S. District Judge

On the same day as the House committee asked Trump to turn over documents and testify, a U.S. District Judge sentenced the president’s top aide to four months in prison for violating a congressional subpoena.

Stone said that he thought it would still be up in the air. “When that happens, the key thing to do is to claim victory. Possession is nine-tenths of the law. No, we won, f*** you.”

At times, President Trump acknowledged that he lost the election. Although he publicly claimed that he had won, privately, he admitted that Joe Biden would take over as President. pic.twitter.com/urgTGKVD3y

Despite publicly declaring he won, Trump privately admitted he lost the election. According to testimony from former White House officials, the president was privately acknowledging his loss, while publicly forging a campaign to overturn the election.

“I went to the Oval just to give the president the headlines and see how he was doing,” said the Communications Director. He looked at the TV and thought he had lost to a guy.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/10/13/1125333531/jan-6-hearing-recap-takeaways-trump-subpoena

The Story of What Happened On Jan. 6: Kevin McCarthy Tells the Pence Why he’s Running for the People, Not the White House

“I vaguely remember him mentioning that he was a professor, and then essentially he turned the call over to Mr. Eastman, who then proceeded to talk about the importance of the RNC helping the campaign gather these contingent electors in case any of the legal challenges that were ongoing changed the result of any of the states,” McDaniel said.

“They think that they will have a large enough group to march into D.C. armed and will outnumber the police so they can’t be stopped,” a Secret Service email read.

In previous hearings, the panel described how the crowd that arrived on Jan. 6 was heavily armed, and that many wouldn’t enter into the Ellipse because they would have to go through magnetometers, a fact Trump was aware of.

“Do you believe this?” The Speaker of the House can be seen saying to the Majority Whip that they were going to be wearing tear gas masks.

Secret Service feared for Pence’s safety. New documents from the agency show that after Trump tweeted his disappointment with his no. 2 on Jan. 6, an agent warned that it was “probably not going to be good for Pence.” Another agent noted there were 24,000 likes on Trump’s tweet within two minutes.

Mick Mulvaney confirms GOP Rep’s account of McCarthy’s call to Trump. According to a previous statement by a GOP Rep., Kevin McCarthy asked the president to stop his supporters as his staff were running for their lives.

“The president told them something along the lines of, ‘Kevin, maybe these people are just more angry about this than you are. It’s possible they’re more upset.

‘Trump was central player’. The hearing went into more details on then-President Trump’s state of mind after he lost the election and continued to pursue avenues to overturn the election results.

Thompson said that Trump tried to take away the voice of the American people in choosing the president, and replace it with his will to remain in power. “He is the one person at the center of the story of what happened on Jan. 6.”

Even when top law enforcement officials told the President his election-fraud claims were false, Trump still repeated the nonsense to a wide audience, over and over again. There’s a pic on this page.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/10/13/1125333531/jan-6-hearing-recap-takeaways-trump-subpoena

The 2021 Capitol Attack: Why the FBI and the White House should look to the Attorney General’s Office to investigate. The Case of Ex-President Steve Bannon

She said that we can’t just punish the foot soldiers who went to the Capitol. “With every effort to excuse or justify the conduct of the former president, we chip away at the foundation of our Republic.”

The Justice Department is recommending that Steve Bannon, a former Trump adviser, be sentenced to six months in jail and a $200,000 fine after he defied a subpoena to testify before the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol attack.

The Department of Justice claimed in a court filing that “Exacerbated” the Capitol attack by evading the committee’s subpoena and that he did not completely comply with the DOJ’s pre- sentencing investigation.

The former aide and other people associated with Trump were subpoenaed last year for a meeting at the Willard Hotel near the White House.

Former President Donald Trump and his movement are posing new challenges to accountability, free elections and the rule of law, ushering in a fresh period of political turmoil.

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’s current prominence on the political scene was already highly unusual. One-term presidents tend to die fast in history. It is a testament to the firm hold that he has on the GOP that he is still a key player nearly two years after losing reelection. It seems that Trump still has a lot to offer, even with his legal and political troubles, and it is time for voters in the GOP primary to move on.

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.

While Democrats and Republicans are at odds on many issues, the ex-President’s past and future is more important to voters than the economy, abortion, foreign policy and crime.

The men and women of Donald Trump are more active than before. 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. Graham is calling on the Supreme Court to block a subpoena for him to testify in a Georgia investigation into whether or not Trump interfered with the election.

Democrat Senator Elise Stefanik and the Trump Organization: How criminal tax fraud is the Trump organization and how the ex-President will respond to their accusations

In Arizona, one of the ex-President’s favorite candidates, GOP gubernatorial hopeful Kari Lake – a serial spreader of voter fraud falsehoods – is again raising doubts about the election system. Lake said he was concerned that it would not be fair.

One of the most powerful pro-Trump Republicans, Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, the party’s number three leader in the House, told the New York Post last week that impeachment of Biden was “on the table.” South Carolina GOP Rep. Nancy Mace, however, told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union” Sunday she did not want to see tit-for-tat impeachment proceedings after Trump was twice impeached. She said she was against the process being “weaponized.” She said that Biden had committed impeachable offenses and would have to be investigated.

An already pro-Trump Republican presence in Washington is likely to expand after the midterms. The candidates that ran on a platform of election fraud with Trump are raising questions over whether or not they will accept the results should they lose their races.

On another politically sensitive front, the Trump Organization’s criminal tax fraud and grandy larceny trial begins in Manhattan on Monday. The ex-President hasn’t been personally charged but the trial could impact his business empire and prompt fresh claims from him that he is being persecuted for political reasons that could inject yet another contentious element into election season. The Attorney General of New York, a Democrat, has filed a $250 million civil suit against the Trumps, three of his adult children and the Trump Organization for their alleged involvement in tax and insurance fraud.

Democrats have been trying to get Trump back in the news. President Joe Biden equated MAGA followers with “semi-fascism” and some campaigns have tried to scare critical suburban voters by warning pro-Trump candidates are a danger to democracy.

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

The Complaints against the Ex-President of the House Select Committee on Investigations of a 2016 Reionization Decree

Now that voters are about to head to the polls, raging inflation and spikes in gasoline prices are likely to be more of a concern than the party in control of Washington.

The ex-president told supporters at a rally on Saturday in Texas that he might 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.”

“This isn’t going to be, you know, his first debate against Joe Biden and the circus and the food fight that that became. This is a far too serious set of issues.”

The committee has taken most depositions behind closed doors and on video and used testimony throughout its highly produced presentations. The most sympathetic witnesses have appeared in person. While this has helped to create a powerful narrative that depicts a picture of shocking neglect by Trump, it also deprives viewers of seeing witnesses under cross examination. It is difficult to assess whether the committee’s case can meet the high standards of 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 have a dilemma about whether to use the law to the full extent or prosecute someone with a political background who may not be in the best interests of the country.

A decision to charge an ex-president running for a non-consecutive second White House term would undoubtedly cause a firestorm. If there is evidence of a crime, sparing him from accountability would send a terrible signal to future presidents.

The committee isn’t going to be influenced by Donald Trump’s efforts to create a circus, Cheney said.

The former president is likely to not give the documents by the end of the day. In the past the committee has been more gentle when it comes to deadlines when there is ongoing communication with the subject’s legal team.

The committee’s order has high-profile people like Roger Stone and Stephen Bannon in it.

“Measurement of the Progress” on Oscillations’ in Nucleosynthesis” (II)

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