(FRI 6/10/22)

By Todd Lassa

It wasn’t the Senate Watergate Committee of 49 years ago, though no reasonable Washington pundit should have expected as much. What we got in the House Select Committee’s first public hearings on the January 6 Capitol insurrection was a reminder of how assiduous and rather pathetic former President Trump was in his attempt to hold on to power … and how he is still trying to do so.

“January 6 was the culmination of an attempted coup,” the panel’s chairman, Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) said in his opening remarks.

The vice chairwoman, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) said the hearings will remind the country that “on the morning of January 6, Donald Trump’s intention was to remain president of the United States, despite the outcome of a fair election” … . 

Thompson and Cheney introduced videotaped testimony made to the House panel including Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, and former Attorney Gen. William Barr, who warned the former president that his claims of November 2020 ballot fraud “were bullshit.”

“And that was one of the reasons I left when I did,” Barr said – December 23, just two weeks before the insurrection – the attempted coup – and with just four weeks left in the Trump administration. 

In this their opening argument, Thompson and Cheney began to build a case that Trump and a close circle of supporters conspired to overturn the election and that their conspiracy engaged with the brute force of the Proud Boys (“stand down and stand by”) and Oath Keepers. They provided testimony that it was Vice President Mike Pence, holed up in the Capitol for the Electoral Vote count, and not President Trump, who called Joint Chief of Staff Chair Mark Milley and the Pentagon to try to get backup support to Capitol police that day.

And as the lame-duck president remained at the White House, watching the rioters chant; “Hang Mike Pence,” Trump said, “Maybe our supporters have the right idea. Maybe he deserves it.”

Documentary filmmaker Nick Quested, who embedded with the Proud Boys, including leaders Enrique Tarrio and Joseph Biggs (who were indicted along with three other members on federal charges of seditious conspiracy earlier this week) testified he was surprised that the group – about 250 to 300 men – did not stick around long enough to listen to Trump’s speech the morning of January 6. Rather, they left for the Capitol to check out the number of police in-wait. 

In her testimony before the panel, Caroline Edwards of the U.S. Capitol Police spoke of finding herself in a “war scene.”

“I was slipping in people’s blood. I was catching people as they fell. It was carnage. It was chaos. I never thought as a police officer I would find myself in the middle of a battle.” 

Far too many of those who believe Venezuelan voting machines threw the election to Joe Biden and that those Proud Boys and Oath Keepers were tourist to the Capitol that day were on Thursday night watching Tucker Carlson Tonight. For the rest of us, the next House Select panel’s public hearing is next Monday, June 13, at 10 a.m.

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