Tag: Proud Boys

1/6 Panel Subpoenas Trump

By Todd Lassa

(PICTURED: Still from a video Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio shot before the January 6 Capitol insurrection, as presented by the Select Committee.)

Donald J. Trump has been subpoenaed by the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol, which in its ninth public hearing (formally, a business meeting) Thursday showed that the former president began his scheme to deny peaceful transfer of power at least as early as July 2020, more than half a year before he lost re-election. Trump also acknowledged privately to White House aides and officials that he had indeed lost the election. 

Among nearly 1 million electronic messages retrieved from the Secret Service are two reports from the “rally” site that agents should wear protective gear to prepare for Trump riding the “Beast” limo to the Capitol after he had been driven back to the White House against his will, and another at 1:25 p.m. that the president “is planning on holding at the White House for the next approximate two hours, then moving to the Capitol.”

Based on the former president’s reputation, Trump’s attorneys will do all they can to fight and at least delay any appearance before the 1/6 panel, which will publish its report by the end of the year. Vice Chair Liz Cheney’s (R-WY) resolution, passed 9-0, subpoenas Donald J. Trump for documents and testimony under oath in connection with the attack. It will not take much legal maneuvering to delay such testimony to next year and the 118th Congress, when Cheney and fellow panel member Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) will no longer be members of the House of Representatives. 

As for Trump’s documents required in the subpoena, during Thursday’s hearing the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the former president’s request to overturn the 11th Circuit District Court’s ruling allowing the Justice Department to review confidential papers that the FBI seized from Mar-a-Lago last August 8.

It is both a testimony to the depth of evidence and material, which the panel has continued to collect as additional witnesses have come forth, and the lengths to which the former president was willing to go to subvert our democracy to avoid having to leave the White House that made Thursday’s hearing as news-infested as it was. There were no new live witnesses. But the panel does have those Secret Service emails and other electronic communications that were requested at the last hearing, July 21, after it was revealed most of them from January 5 and 6, 2021, were said to be lost after the agency updated its devices.

Secret Service emails on Trump supporters planning to come to the Capitol on January 6, from December 26, 2020:

•“They think that they will have a large enough group to march into DC armed and will outnumber the police so they can’t be stopped.”

•“Their plan is to literally kill people. Please, please take this tip seriously and investigate further.”

•“The proud boys have detailed their plans on multiple websites such as [Donald Trump-“wins” website].

Brad Parscale, advisor in the 2020 Trump campaign said in video testimony that “Trump planned as early as July he would say he won.”

Panel member Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) told of how campaign advisor Bill Stepien and White House advisor/son-in-law Jared Kushner wanted Trump to encourage Republicans to vote by mail-in ballot, “but the president’s mind was made up” to claim that mail-in ballots are a key contributor to voter fraud, according to Stepien’s video testimony. On election night, Trump declared victory early and then called on the vote-counting to stop, as ballots came in well into the morning from Democrat-heavy urban areas. 

Trump planned to “declare victory no matter the results,” Lofgren concluded. The panel also produced evidence that Trump did not believe his own Big Lie, even as he was doing all he could to prove his case. 

In another piece of video testimony, Cassidy Hutchinson, aide to ex-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, said Trump told Meadows “I don’t want people to know we lost.”

FRI 10/14/22
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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.

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•Click on Forum to read Pundit-at-Large Stephen Macaulay’s take on Trump’s impeachment trial.
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