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.

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COMMENTS: editors@thehustings.news

Reasonable Republicans?

By Stephen Macaulay

The political TV ads in southeastern Michigan are relentless, excessively negative, and/or empty.

It is rather bizarre when an ad touting the virtues of Candidate A is immediately followed by an ad from the opposing side listing the deficiencies of Candidate A, something that in the advertising business is ordinarily considered a no-no: You will never see a Coke ad immediately followed by one for Pepsi because that would make neither soft drink purveyor very happy with the placement.

For example, Tudor Dixon (R) who is running for governor of Michigan, has made up ground against incumbent Gretchen Whitmer by running ads with high production values that mainly say she’ll do things like make sure children can attend school — and it seems she’s talking elementary school — without being exposed to books that might be disturbing (isn’t this something that local school boards decide, not governors?) or make sure that the problem of a fictitious job loss under the Whitmer administration will be remedied: When she took office in January 2019 the unemployment rate in Michigan was 4.2% and presently it is . . . 4.1%.

That is an example of the empty.

As for the excessively negative, the ads against Elissa Slotkin (D), who is running for reelection in Michigan’s 7^th District against state Sen. Tom Barrett (R), make it seem as though she has escaped from Bedlam or is masterfully corrupt: the lunacy and larceny simply don’t track. But one must not actually think about this stuff, right?

Meanwhile, Slotkin is running ads about family values and job creation — things that Republicans used to promote.

What makes the Slotkin-Barrett matchup more than parochially interesting is because Slotkin is the first Democrat that Liz Cheney (R) has officially endorsed.

According to a statement that was first received from Cheney by the Detroit Free Press, Cheney wrote:

•"I have come to know Elissa as a good and honorable public servant who works hard for the people she represents, wants what's best for the country, and is in this for the right reasons."

•"While Elissa and I have our policy disagreements, at a time when our nation is facing threats at home and abroad, we need serious, responsible, substantive members like Elissa in Congress."

“Good and honorable public servant.”

“Elissa and I have our policy disagreements.”

Cheney, with those observations, is proving herself to be a Rational Republican, someone who understands that the nature of politics is to have policy disagreements but that those disagreements don’t need to devolve into making things up, and into rhetoric more than tinctured with bile.

Once upon a time the GOP could have been considered the party of responsibility. They were not just the adults in the room, but the adults who were well into their careers and who dressed for dinner. (Sometimes younger adults, a.k.a., the Democrats, would have to upset the elders with some fresh ideas.)

The documented end of Responsible Republicans is the Republican National Committee’s “Resolution Regarding the Republican Party Platform,” adopted prior to the 2020 Republican National Convention.

It concludes:

RESOLVED, That the Republican Party has and will continue to enthusiastically support the President’s America-first agenda;

RESOVLVED, That the 2020 Republican National Convention will adjourn without adopting a new platform until the 2024 Republican National Convention;

RESOLVED, That the 2020 Republican National Convention calls on the media to engage in accurate and unbiased reporting, especially as it relates to the strong support of the RNC for President Trump and his Administration; and

RESOLVED, That any motion to amend the 2016 Platform or to adopt a new platform, including any motion to suspend the procedures that will allow doing so, will be ruled out of order.

So it comes down to an intellectual exercise that is about as taxing as eating a bag of potato chips.

I wonder what Cheney’s effect will be on Slotkin’s fortune. Thanks to her work on the January 6 Committee Cheney is widely respected by Democrats who will also acknowledge that they may have “policy disagreements” with her. But Slotkin will get the Democrats’ votes, anyway.

Those who “continue to enthusiastically support the [ex-] President’s America-first agenda” — and I dare say that outside of “U.S.A.” rally chants with pumped firsts, precisely what that “agenda” was isn’t exactly clear — will vote Barrett.

Which leaves independents and those who used to think they were Republicans. How does Cheney influence them?

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COMMENTS: editors@thehustings.news

At Least Three Shades of Red

Sunak is Britain’s Next PM – Rishi Sunak (above) is Britain’s prime minister after his last Conservative Party rival, Penny Mordaunt, dropped out of the race just before Monday nomination deadline, The Guardian reports. Scandal-plagued former PM Boris Johnson, for whom Sunak served as chancellor of the exchequer for two years, dropped out Sunday evening. Sunak was expected to take over for Liz Truss by Tuesday, giving her a total of 50 days as PM.

Note: Truss was on her way out pretty much from the time she took over for Johnson in August. Plagued with a higher inflation rate in the UK than in the US, in part blamed on Brexit administered by Johnson, she announced a huge tax cut evoking President Reagan’s “trickle-down” economics, which triggered a negative reaction by financial markets. That led to her embarrassing reversal of the economic plan.

Sunak, 42, the youngest British PM in nearly 200 years, is to be the third Conservative PM since Johnson won in 2019.

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McConnell v. McCarthy on Ukraine Aid – Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has rebuked House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) for his warning that a GOP majority in the lower chamber will not “write a blank check” for Ukraine, per Newsweek. It’s the latest sign of a continued split between Senate and House Republicans over loyalty to Donald J. Trump and his relationship to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“Russia continues escalating attacks on Ukraine’s infrastructure,” according to McConnell’s statement. “The lessons to us are clear. The Biden administration and Ukraine’s friends across the globe must be quicker and more proactive to get the aid they need.”

Last Tuesday, McCarthy told Punchbowl News that if the GOP retakes the House after November 8^th’s midterms, his caucus will balk at further military aid to Ukraine in its fight against the Russian invasion. Last May, 57 House Republicans led by uber-Trumpers Marjorie Taylor Greene, of Georgia, and Matt Gaetz, of Florida, voted against a $40-billion aid package for Ukraine.

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), responding to a question at a Harvard Kennedy School event last Tuesday, said “I don’t know that I can say I was surprised, but I think it’s really disgraceful that today Minority Leader McCarthy suggested that if Republicans get the majority back that we will not continue to provide support for the Ukrainians.”

Dirty Bomb: After Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu accused Ukraine of preparing a “dirty” nuclear bomb, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy responded in his weekly Sunday evening address that only Russia was capable of using nuclear weapons in Europe, reports Voice of America.

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Discuss these issues in the right or left column Comment box or email editors@thehustings.news.

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How the West Was Won — And How It May Be Lost

By Stephen Macaulay

“Courage is being scared to death… and saddling up anyway.” ~ John Wayne

One of the movie genres that was once popular and almost definitive of America and what it means to be an American was the Western. Invariably there were narratives wherein there were groups of bad guys who (a) considerably outnumbered the good guys and (b) wanted something that wasn’t right, whether it was to bust one of their convicted brethren out of jail before he’d get strung up or who wanted to seize the land of a law-abiding farmer for their cattle.

And the good guys — with a certain amount of cajoling from, say, John Wayne — would invariably do the right thing and, with requisite sacrifice, stand up to the bad guys.

Now we are in a situation where there is question whether the Department of Justice should, assuming it has a case, stand up to Donald Trump and indict him for whatever crimes they may have assessed.

From Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC) to Donald Trump himself there have been not-so-veiled cautions or threats that some sort of violence could occur were that to happen.

What would John Wayne do? Turn lily-livered? Or saddle up and do what it takes, even if it meant having his blood spilled?

Law or lawlessness?

(Strangely, if you think about it Trump has more to him of the railroad magnate who, in those movies, paid off a group of black-hatted hacks to clear out the real folk, or of the smarmy suited gambler who would lie and cheat at every opportunity . . . and hide whenever the hard stuff began.)

Remember, during a campaign speech in Iowa in 2016 then-candidate Trump said: “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters, OK?”

In other words, he could flout the law and it wouldn’t have any effect on him.

But it isn’t about Donald Trump.

The man clearly doesn’t live in the same reality that most Americans do. There is a fraction of Americans who live in his warped world, or who at least find solace in the ostensible case that he is a victim just like they are, but how the alleged billionaire has anything in common with those who work on farms and in factories remains a mystery.

As Liz Cheney pointed out in her opening remarks yesterday, Donald Trump knew that he had lost the election. One could argue that he knew he had lost the election prior to it actually being held — which explains why he so early on began talking about how it would be “rigged.” Were he to be so supreme and superior, it would have been a blowout — in his favor.

When the landgrabber in a Western wanted to take someone’s farm, there was often a phony deed involved. A crooked lawyer would take it to a widow — her husband having been shot by one of the bad guys earlier in the story — and try to force her to sign it.

It isn’t real. Isn’t bona-fide. But when you’re a bad guy such niceties as truth don’t matter.

The January 6^th Committee showed in Technicolor that Trump lied. Repeatedly. Lied knowing full well that he had lost the election. Lied in order to rile up the crowds who you could imagine taking torches to the sheriff’s office to get some miscreant out of jail. . . but in this case keeping some miscreant from going into jail.

The question is whether Merrick Garland is going to hitch up his britches, and do the right thing. The hard thing, but the right thing if he determines the law was broken.

Could there be violence? Certainly.

But is this a nation of laws?

Seems like that was one of the things we learned from those Westerns when the brave man stood up to seemingly insurmountable odds.

Does Donald Trump get to ride roughshod over the law?

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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.

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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.

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COMMENTS: editors@thehustings.news

It’s Trump’s Party and He’ll Run in ’24 if He Wants to

By Todd Lassa

Judging from the crowd reaction at the 2021 CPAC “America Uncancelled” gathering, and from the large-ish group of the former president’s supporters outside the Orlando Hyatt convention hall, Donald J. Trump has already won the 2024 presidential election, just as he “won” last November.

“I will continue to fight right by your side,” Trump told the adoring crowd at the beginning of his nearly two-hour speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference. “We’re not going to start a new party. We have the Republican Party. Wouldn’t that be brilliant? Let’s divide our vote. We’d never win again.”

This was the Sunday evening keynote, if that term applies to a speech in which ex-President Trump returned to familiar gripes and lies, specifically a repeat of how he really won a “stolen” election last November.

He called out the U.S. Supreme Court twice, at least, for refusing to hear challenges to the election results, including Texas’ suit against 18 states whose Electoral College votes went to Joseph R. Biden.

He repeated his attacks on Democrats, this time amping up the rhetoric such that they aren’t merely promulgating socialism but full-on communism. Trump slammed President Biden’s “failed” first month in office for many issues, including the dismantling of the former president’s draconian immigration policy and immediate stop on construction of the southern border wall on Mexico, making this policy look like the corollary to President Obama’s Affordable Care Act, which he spent four years unsuccessfully trying to kill.

Trump promised to challenge the 10 Republican representatives in the House who voted to impeach him last January (singling out Liz Cheney, the “warmonger” from Wyoming) and seven Republican senators who voted to convict him last month, in their next primaries, and crowed about how his endorsement of Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-KY, (whose mention garnered a healthy round of “boos”) pushed him to re-election victory.

In the end, former President Donald J. Trump lit up the crowd with this: “We have to have triumph. We must have victory. That is exactly what we will do. We will go on to victory. We’re tougher than they are. We’re stronger than they are.”

“And then a Republican president will make a triumphant return to the White House,” Trump continued. “And I wonder who that will be. … I wonder who that will be. … Who, who, who will that be.” It wasn’t a question.

It most likely will not be Sen. Ted Cruz, R-TX, who appeared in the opening hours of CPAC last Friday to joke about how nice is was to be in Orlando, though “not as nice as Cancun.”

Cruz did not make CPAC’s straw poll of 2024 presidential nomination candidates, which Trump captured with 55% of the vote, The Hill reports. Florida Gov. Ron De Santis was next with 21%, and South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem grabbed 4%. And 95% of CPAC attendees said they want the GOP to continue Trump’s not-consistently conservative populism. (Click on Forum for the complete straw poll results.)

Which raises the question of how much of today’s GOP CPAC represents. Interviewed on CNN after Trump finished to the sounds of The Village People’s “YMCA,” (Fox News followed the speech with highlights of the speech), the ex-president’s national security advisor from 2018-19 and former Fox News contributor John Bolton, described the former president’s speech as “like watching an old movie, very stale … or TV reruns.”

Of Trump’s straw poll showing of 55% Bolton said, “that is a pathetic figure. I would expect 90%. That is an indication of how much he’s fallen already.”

How much has Trump fallen? On one hand, CPAC’s traditional role as representing the right edge of the Republican party could be seen as a misrepresentation of Trump’s continued popularity within the party (several pundits have remarked that Sen. Rand Paul, R-KY, has won the straw poll in the past, twice). On the other hand, no former Republican president has ever before bothered to even show up for the event a month after his successor’s inauguration.

It seems to all come down to what happens in the next 21 months. If Trump’s candidates beat “un-loyal” Republicans in next year’s congressional primaries, and then go on to beat Democrats in the November 2022 mid-terms, Trump might be on his way to a third presidential nomination. If none of that happens, McConnell and the traditional Republicans may prevail.

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Read the full list of CPAC’s presidential candidate straw poll — click on Forum.

Trump Needs to be Rebuked for January 6

By Bryan Williams

Impeachment Part II has come and gone, and its result has surprised no one. Did there need to be a trial? I still say “yes.” President Trump had to be properly rebuked for what he did, and didn’t do, on January 6. He is forever besmirched as the only U.S. president impeached twice, and the only president who incited a mob to storm our seat of government. I have written before about the possibility of Trump running again in 2024, and I still believe he doesn't have the attention span to run again in in three-and-a-half years. There was a lot of talk about Hillary Clinton running again in 2020 and she didn't. She is a damaged good and her chances of winning were slim. I think the same can be said of Trump.

How much further should the "punish Trump" train go? Investigations in New York, Georgia and possibly Washington, D.C., could lead to more indictments of Trump. Of these, I think the Georgia attorney general’s fraud investigation of Trump’s call to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has the most legs, but let’s not fool ourselves into thinking Trump is going to face a prison sentence for it.

Several congressional Republicans have also let me down. I have enough experience with party politics to never expect legislators to impeach or convict a president from the same party. But this last impeachment was all kinds of weird. It is clear that Trump’s actions after last November’s election resulted in the Capitol insurrection and threats to the health of duly elected officials and the vice president. And let’s not forget the five people who died from it.

Key to the Senate’s lack of a two-thirds vote to convict, and the reason Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-KY, gives for voting to acquit is whether it was constitutional to try a president after he is out of office. I wish the U.S. Supreme Court had been compelled to weigh in on this; It is a burning, relevant constitutional question and Chief Justice John Roberts turned a deaf ear, declining even to preside as judge of the trial and turning that duty over to senior Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont. When will our government start working for us?

I voted for Trump in 2020, and I still stand by that vote. I do not believe in Joe Biden, and so far, his governance is exactly as I expected. I liked a lot of Trump’s policies, but I did not like Trump's tweets and the uglier aspects of his personality. But I could never vote for him again. Those who stood up and voted their conscience on this impeachment (Liz Cheney, Mitt Romney, etc.) deserve a second look (and boy, was I excited about Mitt Romney back in 2012 -- I was waving campaign signs for him every night).

We need principled leadership now, more than ever. Cheney and Romney are the only two politicians I think currently fit that bill, and their chances of going anywhere right now are nil. I’m going for a walk.

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