Four Criminal Referrals for Trump

By Todd Lassa

The House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6^th Attack on the United States Capitol has issued to the Justice Department four referrals for criminal charges against former President Donald J. Trump over attempts to overturn the 2020 election. The charges did not include seditious conspiracy, the charges for which two Oath Keepers, including founder Stewart Rhodes III, were found guilty last month for their involvement in the attack.

The charges are: I.) Obstruction of an official proceeding; II.) Conspiracy to Defraud the United States; III.) Conspiracy to Make a False Statement; and IV.) “Incite,” “Assist,” “Aid or Comfort” an insurrection.

The fourth referral, if prosecuted by the Justice Department, would prevent Trump from running for any federal or state office.

“He is unfit for any office,” committee Vice Chairwoman Liz Cheney (R-WY) said.

John Eastman, the attorney who allegedly advised Trump that Vice President Mike Pence could reject the Electoral College results on January 6, also was named in the referrals. All referrals may be applied to “others” identified in the Justice Department’s investigation, panel member Adam Schiff (D-CA) noted in comments to reporters after the hearing.

Additionally, four Congress members will be referred to the House Ethics Committee for ignoring subpoenas to testify before the 1/6 committee, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) said. They are Reps. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), Andy Biggs (R-AZ), Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Scott Perry (R-PA), Roll Call reports. A fifth, Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) is retiring and was left out of the referrals.

The House Ethics Committee currently has four Democratic and four Republican members, NPR says, and is unlikely to take actions against the four members before a new Congress convenes next month.

Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) said the panel has evidence of attempted witness tampering. An attorney for Trump told a witness to say under testimony that she didn’t “retain facts” and in exchange would be offered a job that “would make her very comfortable.”

In his post-hearing comments, Schiff said there was evidence that some witnesses may not have been completely forthright with the committee. Asked whether the panel has evidence backing star witness Cassidy Hutchinson’s second-hand testimony that Trump physically attacked a Secret Service agent who would not drive him to the Capitol as the insurrection began

https://thehustings.news/surprise-witness-cassidy-hutchinson/

Schiff said; “I found Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony to be entirely credible and I leave it to you to assess the witness’ credibility.”

The 1/6 committee released the first part of its final report here:

https://january6th.house.gov/report-executive-summary

The panel will release the full report before the end of this year, Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-MS) said.

_____
COMMENTS: editors@thehustings.news

Congress Takes Recess

After Friday’s House vote on the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, Congress is on its scheduled summer recess until after Labor Day. The House Select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack will continue its investigation, though with no plans for public hearings before September. The Hustings is taking a break, too, though with news updates, including coverage of the Wyoming Republican primary Tuesday, August 16, in which Rep. Liz Cheney, vice chair of the House Select committee, faces challenges from pro-Trump candidates.

Scroll down to read our aggregate coverage of the FBI’s search of Donald J. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida and the fallout, with commentary in the left and right columns. Contributing pundit Jim McCraw’s commentary, “The Documents Were There. Really. The FBI Took Them Back,” is below in the left column.

COMMENTS: editors@thehustings.news.

_____

Like Beating a Dead Election Results Challenge

By Todd Lassa

If you think you’ve heard everything from the eighth hearing of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6^thAttack on the United States Capitol before, it’s because you watched it in horror that day, and maybe watched most, or all seven, previous hearings.

Thursday night, the panel filled in Donald J. Trump’s 187 minutes of public “absence” that day with loyal Republican White House aides testifying he ignored their pleas to call off the mob as he tried to disrupt the ceremonial Electoral College count.

D.C. Metro Police Sgt. Mark Robinson testified on video that Trump wanted to return to the Capitol after Secret Service drove him back to the White House and put the motorcade on standby for 45 minutes. Trump knew within 15 minutes of returning to the White House that the Capitol had been breached, he said.

Trump then spent the next two-and-a-half hours watching Fox News from the White House dining room. From 11:06 a.m. to 6:45 p.m., the committee said, no calls to the president were entered into the White House logs.

But the president’s attorney, Rudy Giuliani, called Trump for about four minutes beginning at 1:39 p.m., Rep. Elaine Luria (D-VA), of the panel said, and at 1:49 p.m. the D.C. police called the attack a riot. Trump responded by tweeting a video of his speech at the Ellipse from that morning.

In his video testimony, Trump administration counsel Pat Cipollone testified that he and everyone else in the White House except the president wanted the president to call off the riot from the moment its intensity was apparent on TV.

Former Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Matthews, who testified live with former Deputy National Security Advisor Matthew Pottinger (both pictured above) said Thursday she supported a move to get Trump to record a video from the press briefing room, less than a 60-second walk from the dining room, telling his followers to leave the Capitol.

Trump did not budge, and instead took an eight-minute call from Giuliani at 2:03 p.m. At 2:13 p.m., the Capitol building was breached and rioters entered. An anonymous White House security official testified on an audio recording that members from the vice president’s security detail, holed up with Mike Pence in his Capitol office, were beginning to fear for their own lives. The security detail were “close to pressing to use lethal weapons, or worse,” and were calling family with goodbyes.

Trump’s 2:24 p.m. tweet said that Mike Pence “did not have the courage to do what should have been done to defend our country and the Constitution,” and that prompted the mob to turn on the vice president and call for his hanging.

Pottinger, the deputy national security adviser who, in his opening remarks, praised Trump’s foreign policy on China trade and the Middle East Abraham Accord “decided to resign after that tweet. … I simply did not want to be associated with the events that were unfolding at the Capitol.”

Matthews, the former deputy press secretary, called it a “bad tweet” that “essentially gave the green light to these people.” Supporters “truly latch on to every word and every tweet” from Trump. The president called one of his minions, Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), who had to end the call so he could evacuate himself from the Capitol. The 1/6 committee showed the infamous photo of Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) raising his fist in support of the insurrectionists, then moments later running away from the rioters inside the Capitol.

Trump tweeted at 2:38 p.m. and 3:13 p.m., calling on his supporters to “stay peaceful,” but Trump “already knew the mob was attacking the police,” Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) said. One rioter’s two-way radio broadcast said that Trump had told them to support the police, but said nothing about the safety of members of Congress.

Fox News personalities joined the White House staff in urging Trump to call off his supporters and to condemn their actions. Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI) tweeted a video asking Trump to call it off and President-elect Biden told him to “demand an end to this siege.”

Finally, at 4:17 p.m., Trump tweeted a video from the Rose Garden telling rioters to go home, that they were “special” and he “loved” them. By now, the National Guard and FBI began to deploy on the Capitol.

Trump had rejected a Rose Garden script that asked his supporters to “leave the Capitol in a peaceful way. He instead began the message by repeating “fraudulent election” claims.

“I was shocked by the fact that he chose to begin the video by repeating the lie that the election was stolen,” Matthews said. She found it heinous that she may have to defend Trump’s words. “I knew I was leaving (the White House job) that evening.”

Kinzinger showed Trump’s last tweet of the day, from 6:01 p.m., in which he begins, “These are the things that happen when a sacred landslide victory is so unceremoniously and viciously stripped away … remember the day forever.”

“He showed absolutely no remorse,” Kinzinger said.

Testimony bled into January 7, when both Pottinger and Cipollone officially resigned. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley said White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows described to him that Trump was “very emotional and in a very bad place.”

January 6 panel vice chair Liz Cheney (R-WY), standing in for COVID-stricken chairman Bennie Thompson (D-MS), who briefly appeared via video, concluded the hearings saying Trump should not “be even trusted with another position of authority again.”

The committee continues its investigative work in August, when its first report is due, and its next set of hearings are scheduled to begin in September.

_____
COMMENTS: editors@thehustings.news

The Me-lection of Donald Trump

By David Amaya

What followed after former President Donald Trump’s instruction to Proud Boys, a far-right group that endorses violence, to “stand back and standby,” telling his loyalists that the only way he’ll lose the 2020 election is if it is stolen from him, and finally, to “fight like hell, and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore” before sending his rally off to the Capitol was his second impeachment. This impeachment would not be like any other in our history – the Representatives and Senators are not only the jurors and judges of the trial but also witnesses. In a careful balancing act between justice and incumbency, the Senate vote leaned towards incumbency.

The argument made by Donald Trump’s defense attorneys and most of his Republican backers that a former president can’t be subjugated to an impeachment trial is devoid of merit. It was Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-KY, (who has since been demoted to Senate minority leader) who postponed the trial for a date after Trump’s departure from presidency. McConnell’s decision was a hollow strategy that acted as a loophole to our hallow system of checks and balances.

Other than the purported defense that a former president shouldn’t be tried by the Senate, there is no other redeemable quality to the defense made for Mr. Trump. He was indeed guilty both “practically” and “morally” for the invasion of the Capitol, McConnell said after the vote to acquit, but Trump was freed from culpability because he is no longer in office.

In a move similar to McConnell’s expedient “the-end-justifies-the-means” strategy, House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy bit his tongue about the pugnacious president and expressed support for the man who is “committed to helping elect Republicans in the House and Senate in 2022. For the sake of our country, the radical Democrat agenda must be stopped.” Both Republican leaders are gambling away their integrity for a chance at their party’s re-election and a fundraising cashflow crowdsourced by the man who refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power.

Although the House impeachment managers were successful in illustrating the cold hard facts of Trump’s insurrectionist intention, they were unified with the Republicans in one way – they both perpetuated Trump’s everlasting war on what truth is and what facts are. Both sides succeeded in expressing how precarious our fragile republic is at the moment. Trump successfully persuaded legislators on both sides of the aisle to deny and strip the ideological opposition of their humanity, their entitlement to truth, and how to put party over country–the antithesis of the very premise that founded our country.

Lead impeachment manager, Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-MD, prided himself in being part of the most bipartisan impeachment trial yet, but history may beg to differ. In 1974, President Richard Nixon was days away from being impeached before he resigned from the presidency for his crimes against the Democratic National Committee. Nixon’s Republican loyalists on Capitol Hill assured him he would not pass the impeachment vote–his party rejected him, so Nixon exiled himself voluntarily. Fast-forward to 2021 and the Republican party now defends a twice-impeached president who challenges the validity of our democracy’s electoral system; and for what, but to preserve and reinforce the Republican party’s incumbency.

_____
•Click on Forum to read Pundit-at-Large Stephen Macaulay’s take on Trump’s impeachment trial.
•Address comments to editors@thehustings.news

GOP faces Faustian bargain with Trump supporters

By Todd Lassa

Before the presidential inauguration of Joseph R. Biden, the party structure and big business supporters of the Republican candidate who earned the most votes in U.S. election history are rather suddenly fleeing their erstwhile party leader, President Donald J. Trump. The answer to the question of whether Trump and his family maintain at least some control over the GOP through 2024, when the president has indicated he may run for a second term, appears to have shifted quickly in the days following the pro-Trump insurrection on Capitol Hill.

It has affected the future of the Trump family’s businesses. On Tuesday, The Trump Organization’s biggest lender, Deutsche Bank, announced it was cutting ties with both the outgoing president and his business interests, Politico reports, quoting “a person familiar with the matter.” Trump owes the bank more than $300 million, Politico says.

In addition, the political news website reports that New York Signature Bank is closing Trump’s personal accounts and has called for his resignation ahead of January 20. The bank plans to “no longer do business” with members who voted against Congress’ certification of President-elect Biden’s Electoral College victory of 306 to 232.

Meanwhile, at least 10 big businesses say they will withhold contributions to those same Republican senators and members of the House of Representatives, including health insurer Blue Cross Blue Shield, which has contributed more to Republicans than Democrats in every election since 1996, according to reports. Others withholding GOP contributions include American Express, MasterCard, Dow Chemical Company and Hallmark.

BlackHawk, Goldman Sachs, Facebook and Google all will pause political contributions to both parties.

On Monday, John R. Bolton, Trump’s national security advisor from April 2018 to September 2019, in an interview with MSNBC’s Katy Tur called on the GOP to “purge the taint of Trumpism.”

Also Monday, Trump’s approval rating fell to a record low for presidential approval ratings, of 33% in the Quinnipiac poll, with 56% of respondents holding him responsible for the Capitol insurrection. This raises the question of what portion of the 74.3 million Americans who voted for Trump last November 3 still support the president after the Capitol Hill riots – and what portion are the type of supporters who would participate in such riots.

Before the House’s vote on Trump's second impeachment Wednesday, a report in The New York Times and from other outlets said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky, would leave it up to his fellow Senate Republicans whether or not to vote for Trump’s conviction. McConnell’s wife, Elaine Chao, resigned her cabinet post as Trump’s Transportation secretary early in the month.

This slippage in support counters conventional wisdom that Trump-style populism will continue to dominate the Republican Party, which, after Mitt Romney’s loss to incumbent President Obama in 2012, conducted an election “autopsy” to figure out how to adapt a big-tent constituency as the white majority continued to shrink below 50% of the nation’s voting population.

Even if Trump and his family, especially son Donald Jr. and daughter Ivanka, fade from GOP favor between now and the 2022 midterm elections, several pro-Trump Republicans are poised to make a run for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination. Senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Josh Hawley of Missouri face potential discipline for their votes against the Electoral College certification, but Senator Marco Rubio of Florida is still in the running. Moderate Republicans considered 2024 candidates include Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska and Maryland Governor Larry Hogan.

No matter what happens, the traditional Republican issues of tax cuts, small government and minimal regulation will thrive, just as they did under President Trump.

So … what’s next for the GOP? Can it, and should it, purge the Trump family and undermine the power of Trump’s acolytes on Capitol Hill, or should the Republican Party embrace his hard-boiled populism to build on his loyal base?

—–
Please address comments to editors@thehustings.news

The Teachable Moment About Lying

By Michelle Naranjo

Last week, I overheard an 8-year old say to her parent, "Maybe I would vote for Trump because if I robbed a bank, I could probably lie and get away with it." The parent laughed, and exhaustedly sighed through another teachable moment.

We have persevered four years of this presidency, so it seems as if we should all be able to trudge through the final 12 days.

But we can't, and we shouldn't.

This human-made disaster isn't about the personal indiscretions, the golf, the taxes, the children, or the fascination with dictators.

It is about the lies. They added up until there was a tipping point that has caused a historic amount of damage.

Inciting an insurrection with repeated and documented lies should have consequences.

If the 25th Amendment is not brought forward immediately, then there should absolutely be an impeachment as soon as possible.

But impeachment is just the start of the means to make the wrongdoer be held accountable. There should also be prosecution to return public trust and send a strong message to the treasonous supporters alike.

Too many have turned a blind eye too often to Trump's treasonous acts during his presidency. It is almost as if some forgot their inalienable roles as inhabitants and allowed themselves to become viewers to be bought and sold. Too many found the manipulations and bungles...funny.

The supporters of the inciter should also be held accountable, in whatever shape that might take. Historian Timothy Snyder recently wrote, "Politicians who do not tell the simple truth perpetuate the big lie, further an alternative reality, support conspiracy theories, weaken democracy, and foment violence far worse than that of January 6, 2021."

From the eight senators and 139 representatives who consciously chose to support the lies against democracy to those who claimed that believing was more important than their fellow citizens, violence and destruction is not an acceptable tactic to change the minds of non-believers.

The chasm in the culture of this country is repairable but is so very fragile right now.

Democracy is showing us a teachable moment. It is exhausting; it is not amusing.

—–

Natasha Romanoff Is My Girlfriend. Everybody Says So.

By Stephen Macaulay

Amendment XXV, Section 4. “Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.”

As rioters attacked the Capitol, Donald Trump put up a video on Twitter—a tweet that carries a label “This claim of election fraud is disputed, and this Tweet can’t be replied to, Retweeted, or liked due to a risk of violence” — read that again and let it sink in and realize that this is a message from the President of the United States.

He claimed he’d won the election by a landslide. That the election has been stolen from him. That “There’s never been a time like this where such a thing happened where they could take it away from all of us—from me, from you, from our country. This was a fraudulent election. …”

Oh, and he said that the people that he loved should go home.

In the weeks following the election, neither he nor his supporters have presented any certifiable proof of any fraud. Any landslide. Any malfeasance that would lead to a change of the election results.

Yet he repeats it. Over and over. Nothing tangible. Nothing real.

There is what is generally accepted to be reality. Then there is something that is pure fantasy. Most people can discern the difference.

Not even the most rabid Marvel fanboy believes that he’s ever going to date the Black Widow. But if someone kept repeating that he was going to be dating Natasha Romanoff, would someone take him aside and suggest that that isn’t ever going to happen? That he should move on?

And if that fanboy kept repeating it, perhaps saying things like “They are keeping her from me,” wouldn’t it seem that that person is more than a bit off?

Would you allow that person to have the nuclear codes?

There is reality. Things break. Things can’t readily be put back together.

Have we not gotten to the point where people who are allegedly responsible step up and do their sworn duty to preserve and protect the United States?

—–

Trump Must Resign

By Bryan Williams

Since the release of the smart phone upon the world in the latter half of the first decade of the 21st Century, our collective societal will to have patience has been nearly eliminated. These Internet connected devices have allowed for instantaneous communication, instantaneous transfer of money across the world, and food delivered to our door within an hour. Our political and governmental machinations have not caught up. They are still painstakingly slow. That it takes two and half months between a presidential election and the inauguration of the next president is enough to make us tear our hair out (and have enough time to order a wig on Amazon to be delivered within two days).

Let me be clear: Any admiration I had for President Trump is now gone. He must go. But how? It is agonizing to think he has (as of my writing this) 291 hours left in his presidency before Joe Biden is sworn in. How do we wait that long?

Many have said Vice President Pence and the Cabinet should invoke the 25th Amendment. Cabinet secretaries are dropping like flies with resignations over Wednesday's chaos, so soon there may not even be enough of a Cabinet left to invoke the 25th. But even if there were, in my opinion, this would be the wrong course of action. The 25th Amendment is to be used when the president is physically or mentally incapacitated. Working in the mental health field as I do, I can tell you it would be a stretch to declare Trump mentally incapacitated. Trump is mentally capable of doing many things. He is of sound mind. The problem is, he just won't do what is right. We should not degrade the 25th Amendment even though it would be tempting to do so, and I believe, could be up to legal challenge in this case.

How about impeachment by Congress? This is most attractive and should be undertaken even if there is not enough time considering how slow this process is. At the very least Congress should censure Trump.

What should happen is for Trump to resign and let Pence be our President for the balance of the remaining 291 hours. But we all know he won't. Trump is going to ride this horse until its time is up on January 20th at 11:59AM EST.

So the rest of us here in America have to be adults and have a little patience - 291 hours isn't so bad, is it?

—–