Jan. 6 panel interviews ex-Secret Service agent Tony Ornato
By FARNOUSH AMIRI
Yesterday
WASHINGTON (AP) — The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol interviewed former Secret Service agent Tony Ornato on Tuesday about Donald Trump's actions on the day of the insurrection, according to a person familiar with the matter.
This was the third time the committee deposed Ornato, who also served as Trump’s deputy chief of staff for operations. Lawmakers have for months sought his testimony to try to corroborate what other witnesses have said about Trump's actions on Jan. 6, 2021, according to the person, who was not authorized to speak publicly about closed-door depositions and requested anonymity.
“This was an opportunity for him to clear the record,” Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., the committee’s chairman, told reporters Tuesday night. Thompson and other committee members had previously said Ornato and other Secret Service personnel have not been “forthcoming with respect to what actually happened" that day. It remains unclear if Ornato's hourslong testimony Tuesday shed any additional light on the disputed altercation.
Former Trump aide Cassidy Hutchinson testified publicly over the summer about a conversation she had with Ornato at the White House on Jan. 6, 2021. She said Ornato recalled to her how Trump had lashed out and grabbed at the steering wheel of the presidential SUV being driven by agent Robert Engel when the Secret Service refused to let him go to the Capitol after a rally at the Ellipse.
“The president said something to the effect of, ‘I’m the effing president, take me up to the Capitol now,’” Hutchinson told lawmakers.
“The president reached up towards the front of the vehicle to grab at the steering wheel. Mr. Engel grabbed his arm, said ‘Sir, you need to take your hand off the steering wheel. We’re going back to the West Wing. We’re not going to the Capitol.’ Mr. Trump then used his free hand to lunge towards Bobby Engel,” she testified.
Secret Service officials quickly disputed the account from Hutchinson about a physical altercation. The officials did not dispute, however, that Trump angrily demanded to be taken to the Capitol to join a mob of his supporters who were marching there and ultimately breached the Capitol.
“We had interviewed Mr. Ornato several times,” Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., a member of the panel, said in response to questions about the veracity of Hutchinson's testimony. “His memory does not appear to be as precise as hers. We certainly would welcome them to come back if they wish to do that.”
Allies of Trump and his former chief of staff Mark Meadows also questioned some details of Hutchinson's testimony, much of which was secondhand information. Meadows’ attorney, George Terwilliger, told The Associated Press in June that Hutchinson’s testimony “could not withstand even five minutes of fundamental cross-examination.”
But several high-profile Republicans rallied to Hutchinson’s defense, saying the young aide was known to be close to Meadows and often accompanied him in meetings.
The committee is hoping Ornato's latest round of testimony can help clear up the conflicting reports about Trump's furious attempts to stay in power on the day of the insurrection. Lawmakers are also seeking Ornato's testimony as they dig deeper into what the Secret Service knew about the attack on the Capitol, including missing text messages between agents sent around that time.
The nine-member panel has obtained more than 1 million pages of documents and communications from the agency as part of a subpoena. The material is expected to be included in a comprehensive report the committee is putting together and scheduled to release by the end of the year.
Ornato's testimony also came a day after former Trump senior adviser Kellyanne Conway met with the committee. It is unclear what her interview could provide the committee as she had left the Trump White House well before the Jan. 6 attack.
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Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, said the committee has not narrowed down the universe of individuals who may be referred.
Asked whether Thompson believed any witnesses perjured themselves, he said, “that’s part of the discussion.”
When the panel makes referrals, Thompson said it will be a separate document from the panel’s final report that will be sent to DOJ.
The committee is expected to meet later Tuesday.
A source tells CNN the criminal referrals the January 6 committee will ultimately be making “will be focused on the main organizers and leaders of the attacks.”
A subcommittee of members was tasked with providing options to the full committee about how to present evidence of possible obstruction, possible perjury and possible witness tampering as well as potential criminal referrals to the Department of Justice, according to multiple sources familiar with the committee’s work.
Democratic Reps. Jamie Raskin, Adam Schiff and Zoe Lofgren and GOP Rep. Liz Cheney, the vice chair of the panel, all trained lawyers, comprise this subcommittee.
The decision of whether to issue criminal referrals has loomed large over the committee. Members on the panel have been in wide agreement that former President Donald Trump and some of his closest allies have committed a crime when he pushed a conspiracy to prevent the peaceful transfer of power, as they’ve laid out in their hearings. But they have long been split over what to do about it, including whether to make a criminal referral of Trump to the Justice Department.
In the past, the question has led to a vigorous, at times contentious, debate among committee members, sources have said. Those who previously said criminal referrals are not necessary to close out the panel’s investigation say the committee lacks prosecutorial powers, and that the Justice Department does not need Congress to investigate crimes as it has its own criminal investigations into the Capitol attack that are ongoing.
Still, the idea of a criminal referral of Trump, even if entirely symbolic in nature, has hung like a shadow over the panel since it was first formed, and many members felt it was a necessary measure in order to complete its work.
The committee of seven Democrats and two Republicans has interviewed more than 1,000 witnesses, held nearly a dozen hearings and collected millions of documents as it worked to create the most comprehensive record of the insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021.
The chairman, Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., has said the committee will make criminal referrals to the Justice Department recommending prosecution, but has not disclosed who the targets would be or whether former President Donald Trump would be among them. The committee has focused squarely on Trump and efforts by the-then president in the weeks before the attack to overturn his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden.
It would fall to federal prosecutors to decide whether to pursue any referrals for prosecution. Lawmakers have suggested charges against Trump could include conspiracy to defraud the United States and obstruction of an official proceeding of Congress. Recommendations by the committee would add to the political pressure on the Justice Department as it investigates Trump’s actions.
The committee on Wednesday is expected to release its final report, which could include hundreds of pages of findings about the attack and Trump’s efforts to subvert democracy. Committee members will review the highlights of their findings at the Monday meeting.
Attorney General Merrick Garland last month appointed a special counsel, Jack Smith, to oversee investigations related to Trump, including one focused on the insurrection and attempts to overturn the 2020 election results.
Thompson said this week that the committee could also approve other types of referrals, including for ethics violations, legal misconduct and campaign finance violations.
“Different strokes for different folks,” Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., a member of the committee, recently told The Associated Press. “Everybody has made his or her own bed in terms of their conduct or misconduct.”
Recommendations on referrals were drafted by four lawyers on the committee: Raskin; Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, the Republican vice chair; and Reps. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., and Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif. They were tasked with presenting the larger group with their referral recommendations, which the committee will consider Monday.
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Jan. 6 panel pushes Trump's prosecution in forceful finish
By MARY CLARE JALONICK
1 hour ago
WASHINGTON (AP) — The House Jan. 6 committee is wrapping up its investigation of the violent 2021 U.S. Capitol insurrection, with lawmakers expected to cap one of the most exhaustive and aggressive congressional probes in memory with an extraordinary recommendation: The Justice Department should consider criminal charges against former President Donald Trump.
At a final meeting on Monday, the panel’s seven Democrats and two Republicans are poised to recommend criminal charges against Trump and potentially against associates and staff who helped him launch a multifaceted pressure campaign to try to overturn the 2020 election.
While a criminal referral is mostly symbolic, with the Justice Department ultimately deciding whether to prosecute Trump or others, it is a decisive end to a probe that had an almost singular focus from the start.
“I think the president has violated multiple criminal laws and I think you have to be treated like any other American who breaks the law, and that is you have to be prosecuted,” Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., a member of the panel, said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union."
The panel, which will dissolve on Jan. 3 with the new Republican-led House, has conducted more than 1,000 interviews, held 10 well-watched public hearings and collected more than a million documents since it launched in July 2021. As it has gathered the massive trove of evidence, the members have become emboldened in declaring that Trump is to blame for the violent attack on the Capitol by his supporters almost two years ago.
After beating their way past police, injuring many of them, the Jan. 6 rioters stormed the Capitol and interrupted the certification of President Joe Biden’s win, echoing Trump's lies about widespread election fraud and sending lawmakers and others running for their lives.
The attack came after weeks of Trump’s efforts to overturn his defeat — a campaign that was extensively detailed by the committee in its multiple public hearings. Many of Trump’s former aides testified about his unprecedented pressure on states, federal officials and on Vice President Mike Pence to find a way to thwart the popular will.
“This is someone who in multiple ways tried to pressure state officials to find votes that didn’t exist, this is someone who tried to interfere with a joint session, even inciting a mob to attack the Capitol,” Schiff said. “If that’s not criminal, then I don’t know what it is.”
Members of the committee have said that the referrals for other individuals may also include ethics violations, legal misconduct and campaign finance violations. Lawmakers have suggested in particular that their recommended charges against Trump could include conspiracy to defraud the United States, obstruction of an official proceeding of Congress and insurrection.
On insurrection, Schiff said Sunday that “if you look at Donald Trump’s acts and you match them up against the statute, it’s a pretty good match.” He said that the committee will focus on those individuals — presumably Trump — for whom they believe there is the strongest evidence.
While a so-called criminal referral has no real legal standing, it is a forceful statement by the committee and adds to political pressure already on Attorney General Merrick Garland and special counsel Jack Smith, who is conducting an investigation into Jan. 6 and Trump’s actions.
The committee is also expected at the hearing to preview its massive final report, which will include findings, interview transcripts and legislative recommendations. Lawmaker have said a portion of that report will be released Monday.
“We obviously want to complete the story for the American people,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., another member of the committee. “Everybody has come on a journey with us and we want a satisfactory conclusion, such that people feel that Congress has done its job.”
The panel was formed in the summer of 2021 after Senate Republicans blocked the formation of what would have been a bipartisan, independent commission to investigate the insurrection. That opposition spurred the Democratic-controlled House to form a committee of its own. House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy of California, a Trump ally, decided not to participate after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi rejected some of his appointments. That left an opening for two anti-Trump Republicans in the House — Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois — to join the seven Democrats serving on the committee.
While the committee’s mission was to take a comprehensive accounting of the insurrection and educate the public about what happened, they've also aimed their work at an audience of one: the attorney general. Lawmakers on the panel have openly pressured Garland to investigate Trump’s actions, and last month he appointed a special counsel, Smith, to oversee several probes related to Trump, including those related to the insurrection.
In court documents earlier this year, the committee suggested criminal charges against Trump could include conspiracy to defraud the United States and obstruction of an official proceeding of Congress.
In a “conspiracy to defraud the United States,” the committee argues that evidence supports an inference that Trump and his allies “entered into an agreement to defraud the United States” when they disseminated misinformation about election fraud and pressured state and federal officials to assist in that effort. Trump still says he won the election to this day.
The panel also asserts that Trump obstructed an official proceeding, the joint session of Congress in which the Electoral College votes are certified. The committee said Trump either attempted or succeeded at obstructing, influencing or impeding the ceremonial process on Jan. 6 and “did so corruptly” by pressuring Pence to try to overturn the results as he presided over the session. Pence declined to do so.
The committee may make ethics referrals for five House Republicans — including McCarthy — who ignored congressional subpoenas from the panel. Those referrals are unlikely to result in punishment since Republicans are set to take over the House majority in January.
___
Associated Press writers Eric Tucker, Farnoush Amiri and Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report.
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it appears the compromise was cheney would vote to give up trump and eastman if the dems did not go after republican members of congress.
When the house investigative committees issue subpoenas for their Hunter laptop investigation and any others lead by Gym Jordan, just tell them to fuck off, and be like Neil Peart, "ain't coming."
Although, as Congressman Raskin stated, the referrals were just the beginning and that their referrals could lead to others being criminally charged. DOJ, when looking at the evidence in its entirety, may very well criminally charge the four repubs referred to the Ethics Committee.
it appears the compromise was cheney would vote to give up trump and eastman if the dems did not go after republican members of congress.
When the house investigative committees issue subpoenas for their Hunter laptop investigation and any others lead by Gym Jordan, just tell them to fuck off, and be like Neil Peart, "ain't coming."
Although, as Congressman Raskin stated, the referrals were just the beginning and that their referrals could lead to others being criminally charged. DOJ, when looking at the evidence in its entirety, may very well criminally charge the four repubs referred to the Ethics Committee.
it appears the compromise was cheney would vote to give up trump and eastman if the dems did not go after republican members of congress.
When the house investigative committees issue subpoenas for their Hunter laptop investigation and any others lead by Gym Jordan, just tell them to fuck off, and be like Neil Peart, "ain't coming."
Although, as Congressman Raskin stated, the referrals were just the beginning and that their referrals could lead to others being criminally charged. DOJ, when looking at the evidence in its entirety, may very well criminally charge the four repubs referred to the Ethics Committee.
This guy?
Or?
or maybe…
.
Or, have Eddie dial it in, as in, “hello Gym? Congressman Gym Jordan? Yea, Eddie Vedder here to let you know that Hunter, he ain’t coming. And President Brandon? He ain’t coming either. Congressmen Raskin and Shifty Shiff? They ain’t coming either. You don’t need ‘em. Go fuck yourself.”
Now here’s your fruit from the poisonous tree. Or is it brilliant brilliance in all its brilliancy? Pages 1-22 list the fraud perpetrated on the American people to the tune of $250,000,000. Suckers.
Jan. 6 witness recounts pressure campaign from Trump allies
By ERIC TUCKER
1 hour ago
WASHINGTON (AP) — Former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson described to the House Jan. 6 committee a wide-ranging pressure campaign from Donald Trump's allies aimed at influencing her cooperation with Congress and stifling potentially damaging testimony about him.
In extraordinary closed-door testimony made public Thursday, Hutchinson recounted how those in the former president's circle dangled job opportunities and financial assistance as she was cooperating with the committee investigating the Capitol riot and how her own lawyer — a former ethics counsel in the Trump White House — advised her against being fully forthcoming with lawmakers and told her “the less you remember, the better.”
The nine-member committee released two never-before-seen transcripts of Hutchinson’s testimony as it tries to wrap up its investigation and make its work public. The committee, which will dissolve when Republicans take over the House on Jan. 3, was also expected to release its final report Thursday.
The transcripts provide previously unknown details about what Hutchinson called the “moral struggle” — torn between the desire to speak the truth and to remain loyal to Trump — that she says she endured on the way to becoming one of the most memorable witnesses of the committee's investigation.
In a televised hearing in June, Hutchinson went public about Trump’s actions on Jan. 6, 2021. She described his directive that magnetometers be removed from a rally of his supporters that day and detailed his angry — and ultimately rebuffed — demands to be taken by the Secret Service to the Capitol to join the crowd trying to disrupt the congressional certification of Democrat Joe Biden's election as president.
“In my mind this whole time I felt this moral struggle,” she said, according to the transcripts. She described a first interview with the committee in which she concealed testimony about Trump that, months later, she would deliver to a rapt hearing room.
Looking back now, she added, "It feels ridiculous, because in my heart I knew where my loyalties lied, and my loyalties lied with the truth. And I never wanted to diverge from that. You know, I never wanted or thought that I would be the witness that I have become, because I thought that more people would be willing to speak out too.”
But to hear her tell it, that testimony was never a sure thing.
Like other aides whose proximity to Trump entangled them in investigations, Hutchinson scrambled to find a lawyer after receiving a subpoena from the committee last year. Former White House officials and Trump allies worked to line up a lawyer for her despite her own discomfort at being represented by someone in “Trump world" — an affiliation she feared would make her “indebted to these people.”
She said she was contacted in February by Stefan Passantino, a former White House ethics counsel, who told her he would be her lawyer. He said she would not have to pay for his services but demurred when she asked from where the money was coming. She later learned that it was from Trump allies.
“If you want to know at the end, we’ll let you know," she described him as saying, “but we’re not telling people where funding is coming from right now. Don’t worry, we’re taking care of you. Like, you’re never going to get a bill for this, so if that’s what you’re worried about.”
As Hutchinson prepared for her first interview with the committee later that month, she said Passantino advised her to “keep your answers short, sweet, and simple, seven words or less. The less the committee thinks you know, the better, the quicker it’s going to go."
She said that when she mentioned to him having heard about an angry outburst by Trump in which he lashed out inside the presidential vehicle at Secret Service agents over their refusal to take him to the Capitol, Passantino counseled her not to delve into that account with the committee.
“No, no, no, no, no. We don’t want to go there. We don’t want to talk about that,” she described him as saying.
Passantino, in his own statement, said that he had “represented Ms. Hutchinson honorably, ethically, and fully consistent with her sole interests as she communicated them to me.”
All the while, Hutchinson told the committee, other Trump advisers appeared to be taking a keen interest in her cooperation, as well as her financial situation and job status. She said two other lawyers allied with Trump offered in May to front her money as they tried to help her find a job and offered her a job on a campaign out West. Other Trump allies reached out with potential job opportunities.
She said Ben Williamson, a friend and an aide to former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, had spoken with her the night before the second interview with the committee and told her: “Well, Mark wants me to let you know that he knows you’re loyal and he knows you’ll do the right thing tomorrow and that you’re going to protect him and the boss. You know, he knows that we’re all on the same team and we’re all a family.”
Williamson declined to comment Thursday.
During her first interview, she said, the committee asked Hutchinson repeatedly whether she knew anything about a kerfuffle inside the presidential SUV known as the “Beast.” She was nervous and froze and said she knew nothing about it.
But that wasn't true.
During a break in the interview, a distressed Hutchinson told Passantino that “I’m (expletive). I just lied.” She said Passantino did not encourage her to correct the record, instead telling her, “They don’t know what you know, Cassidy. They don’t know that you can recall some of these things. So you saying ‘I don’t recall’ is an entirely acceptable response to this.”
In his statement, Passantino said he believed "Hutchinson was being truthful and cooperative with the Committee throughout the several interview sessions in which I represented her.”
By April, though, Hutchinson said she had resolved to break from the constraints of “Trump world.” She did internet research on the Watergate saga, finding resonance in the story of Alexander Butterfield, the young Richard Nixon loyalist who became a key witness against him.
She drove to the house of Alyssa Farah, a former White House official who had had her own public split from the Trump administration, and asked her to serve as a back channel to the committee because she still had more she wanted to say.
She testified publicly in June — this time accompanied by a new lawyer — and in one of the more dramatic moments of the committee's hearings. She said she had been told that Trump had actually tried to lunge at the agent driving the SUV that took him back to the White House on Jan. 6.
Last September, she returned to the committee and privately recounted the pressure campaign. The information has also been shared with the Justice Department, where Jack Smith, a special counsel named by Attorney General Merrick Garland, is now conducting an investigation.
“I’m not sitting here trying to make myself out to be some hero. I know I handled things wrong. At least, I think I handled some things wrong in the first interview," she said in the interview. “You know, I hate that I had this moral struggle, because it shouldn’t have existed.”
_____
Associated Press writers Mary Clare Jalonick, Farnoush Amiri and Jill Colvin contributed to this report.
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Jan. 6 report: Trump 'lit that fire' of Capitol insurrection
By MARY CLARE JALONICK, ERIC TUCKER, FARNOUSH AMIRI, JILL COLVIN, MICHAEL BALSAMO and NOMAAN MERCHANT
48 mins ago
WASHINGTON (AP) — The House Jan. 6 committee’s final report asserts that Donald Trump criminally engaged in a “multi-part conspiracy” to overturn the lawful results of the 2020 presidential election and failed to act to stop his supporters from attacking the Capitol, concluding an extraordinary 18-month investigation into the former president and the violent insurrection two years ago.
Trump “lit that fire,” the committee’s chairman, Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, writes.
The 814-page report released Thursday comes after the panel interviewed more than 1,000 witnesses, held 10 hearings and obtained millions of pages of documents. The witnesses — ranging from many of Trump’s closest aides to law enforcement to some of the rioters themselves — detailed Trump’s “premeditated” actions in the weeks ahead of the insurrection and how his wide-ranging pressure campaign to overturn his defeat directly influenced those who brutally pushed past the police and smashed through the windows and doors of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
The central cause was “one man,” the report says: Trump.
The insurrection gravely threatened democracy and “put the lives of American lawmakers at risk,” the nine-member panel concluded, offering by far the most definitive account of a dark chapter in modern American history. It functions not only as a compendium of the most dramatic moments of testimony from months of hearings, but also as a document meant to be preserved for future generations.
In a foreword to the report, outgoing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says the findings should be a “clarion call to all Americans: to vigilantly guard our Democracy and to give our vote only to those dutiful in their defense of our Constitution."
The report’s eight chapters tell the story largely as the panel’s hearings did this summer — describing the many facets of the remarkable plan that Trump and his advisers devised to try and void President Joe Biden’s victory. The lawmakers describe the former president's pressure on states, federal officials, lawmakers and Vice President Mike Pence to game the system or break the law.
In the two months between the election and the insurrection, the report says, “President Trump or his inner circle engaged in at least 200 apparent acts of public or private outreach, pressure, or condemnation, targeting either State legislators or State or local election administrators, to overturn State election results.”
Trump's repeated, false claims of widespread voter fraud resonated with his supporters, the committee said, and were amplified on social media, building on the distrust of government he had fostered for his four years in office. And he did little to stop them when they resorted to violence and stormed the Capitol.
The massive, damning report comes as Trump is running again for the presidency and also facing multiple federal investigations, including probes of his role in the insurrection and the presence of classified documents at his Florida estate. This week is particularly fraught for him, as a House committee is expected to release his tax returns after he has fought for years to keep them private. And Trump has been blamed by Republicans for a worse-than-expected showing in the midterm elections, leaving him in his most politically vulnerable state since he won the 2016 election.
Along with other recommendations, the seven Democrats and two Republicans on the committee suggest that Trump should be barred from future office, noting that the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution holds that anyone who has taken an oath to uphold the Constitution can be barred from office for engaging in insurrection or rebellion.
“He is unfit for any office,” writes the committee's vice chairwoman, Republican Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming.
Posting on his social media site, Trump called the report “highly partisan” and falsely claimed it didn’t include his statement on Jan. 6 that his supporters should protest “peacefully and patriotically.” The committee noted he followed that comment with election falsehoods and charged language exhorting the crowd to “fight like hell.”
The report details a multitude of failings by law enforcement and intelligence agencies, noting that many of the rioters came with weapons and had openly planned for violence online. “The failure to sufficiently share and act upon that intelligence jeopardized the lives of the police officers defending the Capitol and everyone in it,” the report says.
At the same time, the committee makes an emphatic point that security failures are not primarily responsible for the insurrection.
“The President of the United States inciting a mob to march on the Capitol and impede the work of Congress is not a scenario our intelligence and law enforcement communities envisioned for this country," chairman Thompson writes in a separate foreword.
“Donald Trump lit that fire," Thompson writes. "But in the weeks beforehand, the kindling he ultimately ignited was amassed in plain sight.”
The report details Trump’s inaction as his loyalists were violently storming the building. Returning to the White House from his fiery speech, he asked an employee if they had seen his remarks on television.
“Sir, they cut it off because they’re rioting down at the Capitol,” the staffer said, according to the report.
A White House photographer snapped a picture of Trump at 1:21 p.m., learning of the riot from the employee. “By that time, if not sooner, he had been made aware of the violent riot at the Capitol,” the report states.
In total, 187 minutes elapsed between the time Trump finished his speech at the Ellipse and his first effort to get the rioters to disperse, through an eventual video message in which he asked his supporters to go home even as he reassured them, “We love you, you’re very special.”
That inaction was a “dereliction of duty,” the report says, noting that Trump had more power than any other person as the nation's commander-in-chief. "He willfully remained idle even as others, including his own Vice President, acted.”
During those hours, dozens of staffers and associates pleaded with him to make a forceful statement. But he did not.
“We all look like domestic terrorists now,” longtime aide Hope Hicks texted Julie Radford, who served as Ivanka Trump’s chief of staff, in the aftermath.
The report says “virtually everyone on the White House staff" interviewed by the committee condemned a tweet by Trump at 2:24 p.m. that day — just as the rioters were breaking into the Capitol — that Vice President Mike Pence “didn't have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution.”
Pence had declined to try to object to or delay the certification of Biden's victory at the congressional joint session.
“Attacking the VP? Wtf is wrong with him," Hicks texted a colleague that evening.
The investigation's release is a final act for House Democrats who are ceding power to Republicans in less than two weeks, and have spent much of their four years in power investigating Trump. Democrats impeached Trump twice, the second time a week after the insurrection. He was acquitted by the Senate both times. Other Democratic-led probes investigated his finances, his businesses, his foreign ties and his family.
On Monday, the panel officially passed their investigation to the Justice Department, recommending the department investigate the former president on four crimes, including aiding an insurrection. While the criminal referrals have no legal standing, they are a final statement from the committee after its extensive, year-and-a-half-long probe.
Trump has tried to discredit the report, slamming members of the committee as “thugs and scoundrels” as he has continued to falsely dispute his 2020 loss.
In response to the panel’s criminal referrals, Trump said: “These folks don’t get it that when they come after me, people who love freedom rally around me. It strengthens me.”
The committee has also begun to release hundreds of transcripts of its interviews. On Thursday, the panel released transcripts of two closed-door interviews with former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, who testified in person at one of the televised hearings over the summer and described in vivid detail Trump’s efforts to influence the election results and indifference toward the violence as it occurred.
In the two interviews, both conducted after her July appearance at the hearing, she described how many of Trump’s allies, including her lawyer, pressured her not to say too much in her committee interviews.
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This Report also examines the legal implications of Donald Trump and
his co-conspirators’ conduct and includes criminal referrals to the Department of Justice regarding President Trump and certain other individuals.
The criminal referrals build upon three relevant rulings issued by a Federal
district court and explain in detail how the facts found support further
evaluation by the Department of Justice of specific criminal charges. To
assist the public in understanding the nature and importance of this material, this Report also contains sections identifying how the Committee has
evaluated the credibility of its witnesses and suggests that the Department
of Justice further examine possible efforts to obstruct our investigation. We
also note that more than 30 witnesses invoked their Fifth Amendment
privilege against self-incrimination, others invoked Executive Privilege or
categorically refused to appear (including Steve Bannon, who has since
been convicted of contempt of Congress).
For anyone wanting to lend credence to Gym Jordan’s bullshit repub 1/6 report that’s not worth the paper it’s written on. From WaPo.
Paul Irving, the House sergeant-at-arms who resigned the day after the attack on the Capitol, said he did not consider involving House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in a decision to request National Guard troops to protect the Capitol on Jan. 6. Irving told the committee that the speaker’s office would be contacted “on the notification side,” saying he had the authority to act on his own.
This contradicts the report released by a group of House Republicans on Monday, which, in blaming Pelosi in part for the violence, said her office “micromanaged” Irving, who “succumbed to political pressures.”
For anyone wanting to lend credence to Gym Jordan’s bullshit repub 1/6 report that’s not worth the paper it’s written on. From WaPo.
Paul Irving, the House sergeant-at-arms who resigned the day after the attack on the Capitol, said he did not consider involving House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in a decision to request National Guard troops to protect the Capitol on Jan. 6. Irving told the committee that the speaker’s office would be contacted “on the notification side,” saying he had the authority to act on his own.
This contradicts the report released by a group of House Republicans on Monday, which, in blaming Pelosi in part for the violence, said her office “micromanaged” Irving, who “succumbed to political pressures.”
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For anyone wanting to lend credence to Gym Jordan’s bullshit repub 1/6 report that’s not worth the paper it’s written on. From WaPo.
Paul Irving, the House sergeant-at-arms who resigned the day after the attack on the Capitol, said he did not consider involving House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in a decision to request National Guard troops to protect the Capitol on Jan. 6. Irving told the committee that the speaker’s office would be contacted “on the notification side,” saying he had the authority to act on his own.
This contradicts the report released by a group of House Republicans on Monday, which, in blaming Pelosi in part for the violence, said her office “micromanaged” Irving, who “succumbed to political pressures.”
oh stop. you and your facts.
The thing is, do any of these corrupt POOTWH’ers think like that no one is going to fact check or request evidence to back their allegations? Do they think that if you just repeat it often enough that the people that you need to convince, secretaries of state, politicians, attorneys, judges, etc. will just go along? Or was it enough to just repeat it often enough, in the absence of facts and evidence, to convince the rubes? Is that all they thought that they needed to do?
Brilliant, brilliance in all its brilliancy with so much winning.
There needs to be major consequences for this shit. Oh Merrick, a nation turns its lonely eyes to you.
For anyone wanting to lend credence to Gym Jordan’s bullshit repub 1/6 report that’s not worth the paper it’s written on. From WaPo.
Paul Irving, the House sergeant-at-arms who resigned the day after the attack on the Capitol, said he did not consider involving House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in a decision to request National Guard troops to protect the Capitol on Jan. 6. Irving told the committee that the speaker’s office would be contacted “on the notification side,” saying he had the authority to act on his own.
This contradicts the report released by a group of House Republicans on Monday, which, in blaming Pelosi in part for the violence, said her office “micromanaged” Irving, who “succumbed to political pressures.”
oh stop. you and your facts.
The thing is, do any of these corrupt POOTWH’ers think like that no one is going to fact check or request evidence to back their allegations? Do they think that if you just repeat it often enough that the people that you need to convince, secretaries of state, politicians, attorneys, judges, etc. will just go along? Or was it enough to just repeat it often enough, in the absence of facts and evidence, to convince the rubes? Is that all they thought that they needed to do?
Brilliant, brilliance in all its brilliancy with so much winning.
There needs to be major consequences for this shit. Oh Merrick, a nation turns its lonely eyes to you.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Did anyone see that under oath in the Dominion case Hannity said he never believed a word of his own reporting on rigged voting machines?
Does that surprise you?
Lol that he admitted it absolutely. Nobody could prove otherwise. He must have been real scared of losing all that money.
Under oath, with the potential of perjury, and potentially spending 10 days in jail? With the “other?” Damn right he was scat. “Looking mighty fine in those jeans, boy!”
Here's some brilliant, brilliance in all its brilliancy. Only the best people, folks. Only the best people.
Eastman’s theory was related to other efforts overseen by President
Trump (described in detail below, see infra) to create and transmit fake
electoral slates to Congress and the National Archives, and to pressure
States to change the election outcome and issue new electoral slates.
Eastman supported these ideas despite writing two months earlier that:
Article II [of the Constitution] says the electors are appointed “in
such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct,” but I don’t
think that entitles the Legislature to change the rules after the election and appoint a different slate of electors in a manner different
than what was in place on election day. And 3 U.S.C. §15 [of the
Electoral Count Act] gives dispositive weight to the slate of electors
that was certified by the Governor in accord with 3 U.S.C. §5.1"
Even after Eastman proposed the theories in his December and January
memoranda, he acknowledged in conversations with Vice President Pence’s
counsel Greg Jacob that Pence could not lawfully do what his own memoranda proposed.'>* Eastman admitted that the U.S. Supreme Court would
unanimously reject his legal theory. “He [Eastman] had acknowledged that
he would lose 9-0 at the Supreme Court.” Moreover, Eastman acknowledged to Jacob that he didn’t think Vice President Al Gore had that power in
2001, nor did he think Vice President Kamala Harris should have that power
in 2025.54
In testimony before the Select Committee, Jacob described in detail why
the Trump plan for Pence was illegal:
[T]he Vice President’s first instinct, when he heard this theory, was
that there was no way that our Framers, who abhorred concentrated
power, who had broken away from the tyranny of George III, would
ever have put one person—particularly not a person who had a
direct interest in the outcome because they were on the ticket for
the election—in a role to have decisive impact on the outcome of
the election. And our review of text, history, and, frankly, just common sense, all confirmed the Vice President’s first instinct on that
point. There is no justifiable basis to conclude that the Vice President has that kind of authority.'°*
Comments
WASHINGTON (AP) — The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol interviewed former Secret Service agent Tony Ornato on Tuesday about Donald Trump's actions on the day of the insurrection, according to a person familiar with the matter.
This was the third time the committee deposed Ornato, who also served as Trump’s deputy chief of staff for operations. Lawmakers have for months sought his testimony to try to corroborate what other witnesses have said about Trump's actions on Jan. 6, 2021, according to the person, who was not authorized to speak publicly about closed-door depositions and requested anonymity.
“This was an opportunity for him to clear the record,” Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., the committee’s chairman, told reporters Tuesday night. Thompson and other committee members had previously said Ornato and other Secret Service personnel have not been “forthcoming with respect to what actually happened" that day. It remains unclear if Ornato's hourslong testimony Tuesday shed any additional light on the disputed altercation.
Former Trump aide Cassidy Hutchinson testified publicly over the summer about a conversation she had with Ornato at the White House on Jan. 6, 2021. She said Ornato recalled to her how Trump had lashed out and grabbed at the steering wheel of the presidential SUV being driven by agent Robert Engel when the Secret Service refused to let him go to the Capitol after a rally at the Ellipse.
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“The president said something to the effect of, ‘I’m the effing president, take me up to the Capitol now,’” Hutchinson told lawmakers.
“The president reached up towards the front of the vehicle to grab at the steering wheel. Mr. Engel grabbed his arm, said ‘Sir, you need to take your hand off the steering wheel. We’re going back to the West Wing. We’re not going to the Capitol.’ Mr. Trump then used his free hand to lunge towards Bobby Engel,” she testified.
Secret Service officials quickly disputed the account from Hutchinson about a physical altercation. The officials did not dispute, however, that Trump angrily demanded to be taken to the Capitol to join a mob of his supporters who were marching there and ultimately breached the Capitol.
“We had interviewed Mr. Ornato several times,” Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., a member of the panel, said in response to questions about the veracity of Hutchinson's testimony. “His memory does not appear to be as precise as hers. We certainly would welcome them to come back if they wish to do that.”
Allies of Trump and his former chief of staff Mark Meadows also questioned some details of Hutchinson's testimony, much of which was secondhand information. Meadows’ attorney, George Terwilliger, told The Associated Press in June that Hutchinson’s testimony “could not withstand even five minutes of fundamental cross-examination.”
But several high-profile Republicans rallied to Hutchinson’s defense, saying the young aide was known to be close to Meadows and often accompanied him in meetings.
The committee is hoping Ornato's latest round of testimony can help clear up the conflicting reports about Trump's furious attempts to stay in power on the day of the insurrection. Lawmakers are also seeking Ornato's testimony as they dig deeper into what the Secret Service knew about the attack on the Capitol, including missing text messages between agents sent around that time.
The nine-member panel has obtained more than 1 million pages of documents and communications from the agency as part of a subpoena. The material is expected to be included in a comprehensive report the committee is putting together and scheduled to release by the end of the year.
Ornato's testimony also came a day after former Trump senior adviser Kellyanne Conway met with the committee. It is unclear what her interview could provide the committee as she had left the Trump White House well before the Jan. 6 attack.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
The Golden Age is 2 months away. And guess what….. you’re gonna love it! (teskeinc 11.19.24)
1998: Noblesville; 2003: Noblesville; 2009: EV Nashville, Chicago, Chicago
2010: St Louis, Columbus, Noblesville; 2011: EV Chicago, East Troy, East Troy
2013: London ON, Wrigley; 2014: Cincy, St Louis, Moline (NO CODE)
2016: Lexington, Wrigley #1; 2018: Wrigley, Wrigley, Boston, Boston
2020: Oakland, Oakland: 2021: EV Ohana, Ohana, Ohana, Ohana
2022: Oakland, Oakland, Nashville, Louisville; 2023: Chicago, Chicago, Noblesville
2024: Noblesville, Wrigley, Wrigley, Ohana, Ohana; 2025: Pitt1, Pitt2
The Golden Age is 2 months away. And guess what….. you’re gonna love it! (teskeinc 11.19.24)
1998: Noblesville; 2003: Noblesville; 2009: EV Nashville, Chicago, Chicago
2010: St Louis, Columbus, Noblesville; 2011: EV Chicago, East Troy, East Troy
2013: London ON, Wrigley; 2014: Cincy, St Louis, Moline (NO CODE)
2016: Lexington, Wrigley #1; 2018: Wrigley, Wrigley, Boston, Boston
2020: Oakland, Oakland: 2021: EV Ohana, Ohana, Ohana, Ohana
2022: Oakland, Oakland, Nashville, Louisville; 2023: Chicago, Chicago, Noblesville
2024: Noblesville, Wrigley, Wrigley, Ohana, Ohana; 2025: Pitt1, Pitt2
The House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitolhas decided to make criminal referrals to the Department of Justice, the panel’s chairman, Rep. Bennie Thompson, told reporters Tuesday.
Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, said the committee has not narrowed down the universe of individuals who may be referred.
Asked whether Thompson believed any witnesses perjured themselves, he said, “that’s part of the discussion.”
When the panel makes referrals, Thompson said it will be a separate document from the panel’s final report that will be sent to DOJ.
The committee is expected to meet later Tuesday.
A source tells CNN the criminal referrals the January 6 committee will ultimately be making “will be focused on the main organizers and leaders of the attacks.”
A subcommittee of members was tasked with providing options to the full committee about how to present evidence of possible obstruction, possible perjury and possible witness tampering as well as potential criminal referrals to the Department of Justice, according to multiple sources familiar with the committee’s work.
Democratic Reps. Jamie Raskin, Adam Schiff and Zoe Lofgren and GOP Rep. Liz Cheney, the vice chair of the panel, all trained lawyers, comprise this subcommittee.
The decision of whether to issue criminal referrals has loomed large over the committee. Members on the panel have been in wide agreement that former President Donald Trump and some of his closest allies have committed a crime when he pushed a conspiracy to prevent the peaceful transfer of power, as they’ve laid out in their hearings. But they have long been split over what to do about it, including whether to make a criminal referral of Trump to the Justice Department.
In the past, the question has led to a vigorous, at times contentious, debate among committee members, sources have said. Those who previously said criminal referrals are not necessary to close out the panel’s investigation say the committee lacks prosecutorial powers, and that the Justice Department does not need Congress to investigate crimes as it has its own criminal investigations into the Capitol attack that are ongoing.
Still, the idea of a criminal referral of Trump, even if entirely symbolic in nature, has hung like a shadow over the panel since it was first formed, and many members felt it was a necessary measure in order to complete its work.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/06/politics/january-6-committee-criminal-referrals/index.html
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
i wonder if the gop will still back the blue after this, or will they try to smear cops as democrats and liberals?
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
WASHINGTON (AP) — The House committee investigating the Capitol riot will hold its final meeting Monday, wrapping up its year-and-a-half-long inquiry by asking the Justice Department to investigate potential crimes.
The committee of seven Democrats and two Republicans has interviewed more than 1,000 witnesses, held nearly a dozen hearings and collected millions of documents as it worked to create the most comprehensive record of the insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021.
The chairman, Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., has said the committee will make criminal referrals to the Justice Department recommending prosecution, but has not disclosed who the targets would be or whether former President Donald Trump would be among them. The committee has focused squarely on Trump and efforts by the-then president in the weeks before the attack to overturn his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden.
It would fall to federal prosecutors to decide whether to pursue any referrals for prosecution. Lawmakers have suggested charges against Trump could include conspiracy to defraud the United States and obstruction of an official proceeding of Congress. Recommendations by the committee would add to the political pressure on the Justice Department as it investigates Trump’s actions.
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The committee on Wednesday is expected to release its final report, which could include hundreds of pages of findings about the attack and Trump’s efforts to subvert democracy. Committee members will review the highlights of their findings at the Monday meeting.
Attorney General Merrick Garland last month appointed a special counsel, Jack Smith, to oversee investigations related to Trump, including one focused on the insurrection and attempts to overturn the 2020 election results.
Thompson said this week that the committee could also approve other types of referrals, including for ethics violations, legal misconduct and campaign finance violations.
“Different strokes for different folks,” Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., a member of the committee, recently told The Associated Press. “Everybody has made his or her own bed in terms of their conduct or misconduct.”
Recommendations on referrals were drafted by four lawyers on the committee: Raskin; Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, the Republican vice chair; and Reps. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., and Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif. They were tasked with presenting the larger group with their referral recommendations, which the committee will consider Monday.
___
For coverage of the Capitol riot, go to https://www.apnews.com/capitol-siege
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
WASHINGTON (AP) — The House Jan. 6 committee is wrapping up its investigation of the violent 2021 U.S. Capitol insurrection, with lawmakers expected to cap one of the most exhaustive and aggressive congressional probes in memory with an extraordinary recommendation: The Justice Department should consider criminal charges against former President Donald Trump.
At a final meeting on Monday, the panel’s seven Democrats and two Republicans are poised to recommend criminal charges against Trump and potentially against associates and staff who helped him launch a multifaceted pressure campaign to try to overturn the 2020 election.
While a criminal referral is mostly symbolic, with the Justice Department ultimately deciding whether to prosecute Trump or others, it is a decisive end to a probe that had an almost singular focus from the start.
“I think the president has violated multiple criminal laws and I think you have to be treated like any other American who breaks the law, and that is you have to be prosecuted,” Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., a member of the panel, said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union."
The panel, which will dissolve on Jan. 3 with the new Republican-led House, has conducted more than 1,000 interviews, held 10 well-watched public hearings and collected more than a million documents since it launched in July 2021. As it has gathered the massive trove of evidence, the members have become emboldened in declaring that Trump is to blame for the violent attack on the Capitol by his supporters almost two years ago.
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After beating their way past police, injuring many of them, the Jan. 6 rioters stormed the Capitol and interrupted the certification of President Joe Biden’s win, echoing Trump's lies about widespread election fraud and sending lawmakers and others running for their lives.
The attack came after weeks of Trump’s efforts to overturn his defeat — a campaign that was extensively detailed by the committee in its multiple public hearings. Many of Trump’s former aides testified about his unprecedented pressure on states, federal officials and on Vice President Mike Pence to find a way to thwart the popular will.
“This is someone who in multiple ways tried to pressure state officials to find votes that didn’t exist, this is someone who tried to interfere with a joint session, even inciting a mob to attack the Capitol,” Schiff said. “If that’s not criminal, then I don’t know what it is.”
Members of the committee have said that the referrals for other individuals may also include ethics violations, legal misconduct and campaign finance violations. Lawmakers have suggested in particular that their recommended charges against Trump could include conspiracy to defraud the United States, obstruction of an official proceeding of Congress and insurrection.
On insurrection, Schiff said Sunday that “if you look at Donald Trump’s acts and you match them up against the statute, it’s a pretty good match.” He said that the committee will focus on those individuals — presumably Trump — for whom they believe there is the strongest evidence.
While a so-called criminal referral has no real legal standing, it is a forceful statement by the committee and adds to political pressure already on Attorney General Merrick Garland and special counsel Jack Smith, who is conducting an investigation into Jan. 6 and Trump’s actions.
The committee is also expected at the hearing to preview its massive final report, which will include findings, interview transcripts and legislative recommendations. Lawmaker have said a portion of that report will be released Monday.
“We obviously want to complete the story for the American people,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., another member of the committee. “Everybody has come on a journey with us and we want a satisfactory conclusion, such that people feel that Congress has done its job.”
The panel was formed in the summer of 2021 after Senate Republicans blocked the formation of what would have been a bipartisan, independent commission to investigate the insurrection. That opposition spurred the Democratic-controlled House to form a committee of its own. House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy of California, a Trump ally, decided not to participate after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi rejected some of his appointments. That left an opening for two anti-Trump Republicans in the House — Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois — to join the seven Democrats serving on the committee.
While the committee’s mission was to take a comprehensive accounting of the insurrection and educate the public about what happened, they've also aimed their work at an audience of one: the attorney general. Lawmakers on the panel have openly pressured Garland to investigate Trump’s actions, and last month he appointed a special counsel, Smith, to oversee several probes related to Trump, including those related to the insurrection.
In court documents earlier this year, the committee suggested criminal charges against Trump could include conspiracy to defraud the United States and obstruction of an official proceeding of Congress.
In a “conspiracy to defraud the United States,” the committee argues that evidence supports an inference that Trump and his allies “entered into an agreement to defraud the United States” when they disseminated misinformation about election fraud and pressured state and federal officials to assist in that effort. Trump still says he won the election to this day.
The panel also asserts that Trump obstructed an official proceeding, the joint session of Congress in which the Electoral College votes are certified. The committee said Trump either attempted or succeeded at obstructing, influencing or impeding the ceremonial process on Jan. 6 and “did so corruptly” by pressuring Pence to try to overturn the results as he presided over the session. Pence declined to do so.
The committee may make ethics referrals for five House Republicans — including McCarthy — who ignored congressional subpoenas from the panel. Those referrals are unlikely to result in punishment since Republicans are set to take over the House majority in January.
___
Associated Press writers Eric Tucker, Farnoush Amiri and Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report.
___
For full coverage of the Jan. 6 hearings, go to https://www.apnews.com/capitol-siege.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
feels good....let's hope the DOJ does its job
The Golden Age is 2 months away. And guess what….. you’re gonna love it! (teskeinc 11.19.24)
1998: Noblesville; 2003: Noblesville; 2009: EV Nashville, Chicago, Chicago
2010: St Louis, Columbus, Noblesville; 2011: EV Chicago, East Troy, East Troy
2013: London ON, Wrigley; 2014: Cincy, St Louis, Moline (NO CODE)
2016: Lexington, Wrigley #1; 2018: Wrigley, Wrigley, Boston, Boston
2020: Oakland, Oakland: 2021: EV Ohana, Ohana, Ohana, Ohana
2022: Oakland, Oakland, Nashville, Louisville; 2023: Chicago, Chicago, Noblesville
2024: Noblesville, Wrigley, Wrigley, Ohana, Ohana; 2025: Pitt1, Pitt2
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
Although, as Congressman Raskin stated, the referrals were just the beginning and that their referrals could lead to others being criminally charged. DOJ, when looking at the evidence in its entirety, may very well criminally charge the four repubs referred to the Ethics Committee.
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
or maybe…
.
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
https://docs-cdn-prod.news-engineering.aws.wapo.pub/publish_document/80a91be4-ca85-495c-9394-3405a9477cf4/published/80a91be4-ca85-495c-9394-3405a9477cf4.pdf
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
WASHINGTON (AP) — Former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson described to the House Jan. 6 committee a wide-ranging pressure campaign from Donald Trump's allies aimed at influencing her cooperation with Congress and stifling potentially damaging testimony about him.
In extraordinary closed-door testimony made public Thursday, Hutchinson recounted how those in the former president's circle dangled job opportunities and financial assistance as she was cooperating with the committee investigating the Capitol riot and how her own lawyer — a former ethics counsel in the Trump White House — advised her against being fully forthcoming with lawmakers and told her “the less you remember, the better.”
The nine-member committee released two never-before-seen transcripts of Hutchinson’s testimony as it tries to wrap up its investigation and make its work public. The committee, which will dissolve when Republicans take over the House on Jan. 3, was also expected to release its final report Thursday.
The transcripts provide previously unknown details about what Hutchinson called the “moral struggle” — torn between the desire to speak the truth and to remain loyal to Trump — that she says she endured on the way to becoming one of the most memorable witnesses of the committee's investigation.
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In a televised hearing in June, Hutchinson went public about Trump’s actions on Jan. 6, 2021. She described his directive that magnetometers be removed from a rally of his supporters that day and detailed his angry — and ultimately rebuffed — demands to be taken by the Secret Service to the Capitol to join the crowd trying to disrupt the congressional certification of Democrat Joe Biden's election as president.
“In my mind this whole time I felt this moral struggle,” she said, according to the transcripts. She described a first interview with the committee in which she concealed testimony about Trump that, months later, she would deliver to a rapt hearing room.
Looking back now, she added, "It feels ridiculous, because in my heart I knew where my loyalties lied, and my loyalties lied with the truth. And I never wanted to diverge from that. You know, I never wanted or thought that I would be the witness that I have become, because I thought that more people would be willing to speak out too.”
But to hear her tell it, that testimony was never a sure thing.
Like other aides whose proximity to Trump entangled them in investigations, Hutchinson scrambled to find a lawyer after receiving a subpoena from the committee last year. Former White House officials and Trump allies worked to line up a lawyer for her despite her own discomfort at being represented by someone in “Trump world" — an affiliation she feared would make her “indebted to these people.”
She said she was contacted in February by Stefan Passantino, a former White House ethics counsel, who told her he would be her lawyer. He said she would not have to pay for his services but demurred when she asked from where the money was coming. She later learned that it was from Trump allies.
“If you want to know at the end, we’ll let you know," she described him as saying, “but we’re not telling people where funding is coming from right now. Don’t worry, we’re taking care of you. Like, you’re never going to get a bill for this, so if that’s what you’re worried about.”
As Hutchinson prepared for her first interview with the committee later that month, she said Passantino advised her to “keep your answers short, sweet, and simple, seven words or less. The less the committee thinks you know, the better, the quicker it’s going to go."
She said that when she mentioned to him having heard about an angry outburst by Trump in which he lashed out inside the presidential vehicle at Secret Service agents over their refusal to take him to the Capitol, Passantino counseled her not to delve into that account with the committee.
“No, no, no, no, no. We don’t want to go there. We don’t want to talk about that,” she described him as saying.
Passantino, in his own statement, said that he had “represented Ms. Hutchinson honorably, ethically, and fully consistent with her sole interests as she communicated them to me.”
All the while, Hutchinson told the committee, other Trump advisers appeared to be taking a keen interest in her cooperation, as well as her financial situation and job status. She said two other lawyers allied with Trump offered in May to front her money as they tried to help her find a job and offered her a job on a campaign out West. Other Trump allies reached out with potential job opportunities.
She said Ben Williamson, a friend and an aide to former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, had spoken with her the night before the second interview with the committee and told her: “Well, Mark wants me to let you know that he knows you’re loyal and he knows you’ll do the right thing tomorrow and that you’re going to protect him and the boss. You know, he knows that we’re all on the same team and we’re all a family.”
Williamson declined to comment Thursday.
During her first interview, she said, the committee asked Hutchinson repeatedly whether she knew anything about a kerfuffle inside the presidential SUV known as the “Beast.” She was nervous and froze and said she knew nothing about it.
But that wasn't true.
During a break in the interview, a distressed Hutchinson told Passantino that “I’m (expletive). I just lied.” She said Passantino did not encourage her to correct the record, instead telling her, “They don’t know what you know, Cassidy. They don’t know that you can recall some of these things. So you saying ‘I don’t recall’ is an entirely acceptable response to this.”
In his statement, Passantino said he believed "Hutchinson was being truthful and cooperative with the Committee throughout the several interview sessions in which I represented her.”
By April, though, Hutchinson said she had resolved to break from the constraints of “Trump world.” She did internet research on the Watergate saga, finding resonance in the story of Alexander Butterfield, the young Richard Nixon loyalist who became a key witness against him.
She drove to the house of Alyssa Farah, a former White House official who had had her own public split from the Trump administration, and asked her to serve as a back channel to the committee because she still had more she wanted to say.
She testified publicly in June — this time accompanied by a new lawyer — and in one of the more dramatic moments of the committee's hearings. She said she had been told that Trump had actually tried to lunge at the agent driving the SUV that took him back to the White House on Jan. 6.
Last September, she returned to the committee and privately recounted the pressure campaign. The information has also been shared with the Justice Department, where Jack Smith, a special counsel named by Attorney General Merrick Garland, is now conducting an investigation.
“I’m not sitting here trying to make myself out to be some hero. I know I handled things wrong. At least, I think I handled some things wrong in the first interview," she said in the interview. “You know, I hate that I had this moral struggle, because it shouldn’t have existed.”
_____
Associated Press writers Mary Clare Jalonick, Farnoush Amiri and Jill Colvin contributed to this report.
___
Follow the AP’s coverage of the Capitol insurrection at https://apnews.com/hub/capitol-siege
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
WASHINGTON (AP) — The House Jan. 6 committee’s final report asserts that Donald Trump criminally engaged in a “multi-part conspiracy” to overturn the lawful results of the 2020 presidential election and failed to act to stop his supporters from attacking the Capitol, concluding an extraordinary 18-month investigation into the former president and the violent insurrection two years ago.
Trump “lit that fire,” the committee’s chairman, Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, writes.
The 814-page report released Thursday comes after the panel interviewed more than 1,000 witnesses, held 10 hearings and obtained millions of pages of documents. The witnesses — ranging from many of Trump’s closest aides to law enforcement to some of the rioters themselves — detailed Trump’s “premeditated” actions in the weeks ahead of the insurrection and how his wide-ranging pressure campaign to overturn his defeat directly influenced those who brutally pushed past the police and smashed through the windows and doors of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
The central cause was “one man,” the report says: Trump.
The insurrection gravely threatened democracy and “put the lives of American lawmakers at risk,” the nine-member panel concluded, offering by far the most definitive account of a dark chapter in modern American history. It functions not only as a compendium of the most dramatic moments of testimony from months of hearings, but also as a document meant to be preserved for future generations.
CAPITOL SIEGE
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In a foreword to the report, outgoing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says the findings should be a “clarion call to all Americans: to vigilantly guard our Democracy and to give our vote only to those dutiful in their defense of our Constitution."
The report’s eight chapters tell the story largely as the panel’s hearings did this summer — describing the many facets of the remarkable plan that Trump and his advisers devised to try and void President Joe Biden’s victory. The lawmakers describe the former president's pressure on states, federal officials, lawmakers and Vice President Mike Pence to game the system or break the law.
In the two months between the election and the insurrection, the report says, “President Trump or his inner circle engaged in at least 200 apparent acts of public or private outreach, pressure, or condemnation, targeting either State legislators or State or local election administrators, to overturn State election results.”
Trump's repeated, false claims of widespread voter fraud resonated with his supporters, the committee said, and were amplified on social media, building on the distrust of government he had fostered for his four years in office. And he did little to stop them when they resorted to violence and stormed the Capitol.
The massive, damning report comes as Trump is running again for the presidency and also facing multiple federal investigations, including probes of his role in the insurrection and the presence of classified documents at his Florida estate. This week is particularly fraught for him, as a House committee is expected to release his tax returns after he has fought for years to keep them private. And Trump has been blamed by Republicans for a worse-than-expected showing in the midterm elections, leaving him in his most politically vulnerable state since he won the 2016 election.
Along with other recommendations, the seven Democrats and two Republicans on the committee suggest that Trump should be barred from future office, noting that the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution holds that anyone who has taken an oath to uphold the Constitution can be barred from office for engaging in insurrection or rebellion.
“He is unfit for any office,” writes the committee's vice chairwoman, Republican Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming.
Posting on his social media site, Trump called the report “highly partisan” and falsely claimed it didn’t include his statement on Jan. 6 that his supporters should protest “peacefully and patriotically.” The committee noted he followed that comment with election falsehoods and charged language exhorting the crowd to “fight like hell.”
The report details a multitude of failings by law enforcement and intelligence agencies, noting that many of the rioters came with weapons and had openly planned for violence online. “The failure to sufficiently share and act upon that intelligence jeopardized the lives of the police officers defending the Capitol and everyone in it,” the report says.
At the same time, the committee makes an emphatic point that security failures are not primarily responsible for the insurrection.
“The President of the United States inciting a mob to march on the Capitol and impede the work of Congress is not a scenario our intelligence and law enforcement communities envisioned for this country," chairman Thompson writes in a separate foreword.
“Donald Trump lit that fire," Thompson writes. "But in the weeks beforehand, the kindling he ultimately ignited was amassed in plain sight.”
The report details Trump’s inaction as his loyalists were violently storming the building. Returning to the White House from his fiery speech, he asked an employee if they had seen his remarks on television.
“Sir, they cut it off because they’re rioting down at the Capitol,” the staffer said, according to the report.
A White House photographer snapped a picture of Trump at 1:21 p.m., learning of the riot from the employee. “By that time, if not sooner, he had been made aware of the violent riot at the Capitol,” the report states.
In total, 187 minutes elapsed between the time Trump finished his speech at the Ellipse and his first effort to get the rioters to disperse, through an eventual video message in which he asked his supporters to go home even as he reassured them, “We love you, you’re very special.”
That inaction was a “dereliction of duty,” the report says, noting that Trump had more power than any other person as the nation's commander-in-chief. "He willfully remained idle even as others, including his own Vice President, acted.”
During those hours, dozens of staffers and associates pleaded with him to make a forceful statement. But he did not.
“We all look like domestic terrorists now,” longtime aide Hope Hicks texted Julie Radford, who served as Ivanka Trump’s chief of staff, in the aftermath.
The report says “virtually everyone on the White House staff" interviewed by the committee condemned a tweet by Trump at 2:24 p.m. that day — just as the rioters were breaking into the Capitol — that Vice President Mike Pence “didn't have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution.”
Pence had declined to try to object to or delay the certification of Biden's victory at the congressional joint session.
“Attacking the VP? Wtf is wrong with him," Hicks texted a colleague that evening.
The investigation's release is a final act for House Democrats who are ceding power to Republicans in less than two weeks, and have spent much of their four years in power investigating Trump. Democrats impeached Trump twice, the second time a week after the insurrection. He was acquitted by the Senate both times. Other Democratic-led probes investigated his finances, his businesses, his foreign ties and his family.
On Monday, the panel officially passed their investigation to the Justice Department, recommending the department investigate the former president on four crimes, including aiding an insurrection. While the criminal referrals have no legal standing, they are a final statement from the committee after its extensive, year-and-a-half-long probe.
Trump has tried to discredit the report, slamming members of the committee as “thugs and scoundrels” as he has continued to falsely dispute his 2020 loss.
In response to the panel’s criminal referrals, Trump said: “These folks don’t get it that when they come after me, people who love freedom rally around me. It strengthens me.”
The committee has also begun to release hundreds of transcripts of its interviews. On Thursday, the panel released transcripts of two closed-door interviews with former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, who testified in person at one of the televised hearings over the summer and described in vivid detail Trump’s efforts to influence the election results and indifference toward the violence as it occurred.
In the two interviews, both conducted after her July appearance at the hearing, she described how many of Trump’s allies, including her lawyer, pressured her not to say too much in her committee interviews.
___
Follow the AP’s coverage of the Capitol insurrection at https://apnews.com/hub/capitol-siege
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
967ead23-9f0d-4fe7-8f27-8d78411e8a2d.pdf (wapo.pub)
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Brilliantati©
There are no kings inside the gates of eden
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Paul Irving, the House sergeant-at-arms who resigned the day after the attack on the Capitol, said he did not consider involving House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in a decision to request National Guard troops to protect the Capitol on Jan. 6. Irving told the committee that the speaker’s office would be contacted “on the notification side,” saying he had the authority to act on his own.
This contradicts the report released by a group of House Republicans on Monday, which, in blaming Pelosi in part for the violence, said her office “micromanaged” Irving, who “succumbed to political pressures.”
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oh stop. you and your facts.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Brilliant, brilliance in all its brilliancy with so much winning.
There needs to be major consequences for this shit. Oh Merrick, a nation turns its lonely eyes to you.
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https://www.thedailybeast.com/donald-trump-special-prosecutor-jack-smith-has-a-history-of-indicting-presidents?ref=scroll
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
There are no kings inside the gates of eden
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Eastman’s theory was related to other efforts overseen by President Trump (described in detail below, see infra) to create and transmit fake electoral slates to Congress and the National Archives, and to pressure States to change the election outcome and issue new electoral slates. Eastman supported these ideas despite writing two months earlier that:
Article II [of the Constitution] says the electors are appointed “in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct,” but I don’t think that entitles the Legislature to change the rules after the election and appoint a different slate of electors in a manner different than what was in place on election day. And 3 U.S.C. §15 [of the Electoral Count Act] gives dispositive weight to the slate of electors that was certified by the Governor in accord with 3 U.S.C. §5.1"
Even after Eastman proposed the theories in his December and January memoranda, he acknowledged in conversations with Vice President Pence’s counsel Greg Jacob that Pence could not lawfully do what his own memoranda proposed.'>* Eastman admitted that the U.S. Supreme Court would unanimously reject his legal theory. “He [Eastman] had acknowledged that he would lose 9-0 at the Supreme Court.”
Moreover, Eastman acknowledged to Jacob that he didn’t think Vice President Al Gore had that power in 2001, nor did he think Vice President Kamala Harris should have that power in 2025.54
In testimony before the Select Committee, Jacob described in detail why the Trump plan for Pence was illegal: [T]he Vice President’s first instinct, when he heard this theory, was that there was no way that our Framers, who abhorred concentrated power, who had broken away from the tyranny of George III, would ever have put one person—particularly not a person who had a direct interest in the outcome because they were on the ticket for the election—in a role to have decisive impact on the outcome of the election. And our review of text, history, and, frankly, just common sense, all confirmed the Vice President’s first instinct on that point. There is no justifiable basis to conclude that the Vice President has that kind of authority.'°*
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