Tuesday Reads: Jan. 6 Committee Surprise Hearing
Posted: June 28, 2022 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: 2020 Elections, 2021 Insurrection | Tags: Cassidy Hutchinson, Donald Trump, January 6 Committee hearings, Jeffrey Clark, John Eastman, Mark Meadows |
Good Morning!!
Yesterday, after the January 6 Committee announced a surprise hearing for today at 1PM, I was glued to Twitter trying to get clues to what could be coming. By late last night, news had leaked that the surprise witness is Cassidy Hutchinson, a top aide to Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows. Dakinikat stayed up later than I did, and she texted me a more detailed account of what the committee may be planning to reveal by Hugo Lowell of The Guardian (more below).
Background info on Hutchinson from The Washington Post: Who is Cassidy Hutchinson?
Cassidy Hutchinson, an aide to Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, has become one of the most useful witnesses for the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by a pro-Trump mob determined to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s win.
Cassidy Hutchinson
She has spoken to investigators on the committee multiple times behind closed doors. In the absence of testimony from Meadows himself — he refused to appear, and the committee held him in contempt — Hutchinson seems to be key to understanding the scope of his actions….
Hutchinson was by Meadows’s side leading up to and during the Capitol attack and has told the committee of strategy sessions held between the White House and President Donald Trump’s allies in Congress about whether they should encourage “Stop the Steal” participants to march to the Capitol, and how to set up alternative slates of electors.
The Washington Post reported that she confirmed to the committee that at one point Meadows said Trump had indicated support for protesters who were shouting, “Hang Mike Pence!”
Videotaped testimony from Hutchinson was also central to allegations of pardon-hunting by Republican House members. The allegations were aired by the committee at Thursday’s hearing.
Hutchinson testified that she was involved with conversations about requests from Reps. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) and Scott Perry (R-Pa.), all of whom she said had sought a promise from the White House to be cleared in advance of any crimes they might be charged with. Perry had previously denied seeking a pardon, but Hutchinson insisted in her deposition that he had spoken to her directly about it….
According to a court filing in April, Hutchinson told congressional investigators that Meadows was warned before Jan. 6 about the threat of violence that day as supporters of Trump planned to mass at the U.S. Capitol.
Hutchinson recalled that Anthony Ornato, a senior Secret Service official who also held the role of a political adviser at the White House, “coming in and saying that we had intel reports saying that there could potentially be violence on the 6th. And Mr. Meadows said: All right. Let’s talk about it.”
Hutchinson added, “I’m not sure if he — what he did with that information internally.”
Read more about her at the WaPo. We don’t know what further information Hutchinson plans to share with the committee, but the reason they want her to testify ASAP is because she has faced threats and perhaps could be subject to witness tampering.
Dakinikat sent me this article late last night:
From the Guardian:
The House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack is closely focused on phone calls and conversations among Donald Trump’s children and top aides captured by a documentary film-maker weeks before the 2020 election, say sources familiar with the matter.
The calls among Trump’s children and top aides took place at an invitation-only event at the Trump International hotel in Washington that took place the night of the first presidential debate on 29 September 2020, the sources said.
The select committee is interested in the calls, the sources said, since the footage is understood to show the former president’s children, including Donald Jr and Eric Trump, privately discussing strategies about the election at a crucial time in the presidential campaign.
House investigators first learned about the event, hosted by the Trump campaign, and the existence of the footage through British film-maker Alex Holder, who testified about what he and his crew recorded during a two-hour interview last week, the sources said….
The select committee is closely focused on the footage of the event – in addition to the content of the one-on-one interviews with Trump and Ivanka – because the discussions about strategies mirror similar conversations at that time by top Trump advisors.
On the night of the first presidential debate, Trump’s top former strategist Steve Bannon said in an interview with The Circus on Showtime that the outcome of the election would be decided at the state level and eventually at the congressional certification on January 6.
“They’re going to try and overturn this election with uncertified votes,” Bannon said. Asked how he expects the election to end, Bannon said: “Right before noon on the 20th, in a vote in the House, Trump will win the presidency.”
The select committee believes that ideas such as Bannon’s were communicated to advisers to Donald Jr and his fiancee, Kimberly Guilfoyle, even before the 2020 election had taken place, the sources said – leading House investigators to want to review the Trump hotel footage.
What appears to interest the panel is whether Trump and his children had planned to somehow stop the certification of the election on January 6 – a potential violation of federal law – and to force a contingent election if Trump lost as early as September.
Before the news about the surprise committee hearing broke yesterday, the big story was that John Eastman’s phone was seized by federal agents on the same day that federal agents searched Jeffrey Clark’s home last week.
John Eastman, the attorney who developed Donald Trump’s last-ditch strategy to seize a second term, said in court Monday that he had his phone seized by federal agents last week.
In a court filing in federal court in New Mexico, Eastman indicated he was confronted by agentswhen leaving a restaurant. He’s moving for a judge to order his phone returned.
“The federal agents identified themselves as FBI agents, but they appeared to be executing a warrant issued at the behest of the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General,” Eastman’s lawyer, Charles Burnham, wrote in the 13-page filing.
Eastman accompanied the filing with a copy of the search warrant, authorized by a federal magistrate judge in Albuquerque.
Jeffrey Clark
A legal adviser to Trump’s campaign, Eastman has been a central figure in the Capitol riot committee’s case that the former president attempted to block the peaceful transfer of power on Jan. 6, 2021. A federal judge in California has previously ruled that Eastman and Trump “likely” entered a criminal conspiracy to obstruct the counting of electoral votes on Jan. 6.
The search of Eastman’s phone appears to have come amid a flurry of activity by federal prosecutors probing the Jan. 6 attack and efforts by Trump allies to authorize false slates of electors as part of a plan to overturn the 2020 election.
Last week, subpoenas were served on a slew of those false electors, including at least three state Republican Party chairs. Investigators also searched the Lorton, Va., home of former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark, another critical player in Trump’s efforts.
As a number of legal experts have pointed out, in order to get a search warrant for Eastman’s phone, the government would have to convince a judge that there is probable cause to believe the device contains evidence of a crime. Since the search was initiated by the DOJ Inspector General, the information likely relates to the case against Jeffrey Clark, a former DOJ employee.
I’m going to end there for now. I will post any further news I find in the comment thread. We’ll soon know what the committee believes is so important they are holding an unscheduled meeting three days before the Fourth of July break.
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One of the greatest BS artist of all time!
He’s one year younger than my mother.
Just posting this shit…and saying that the Republicans are loving this:
From the gang that brought you the likes of Susan Sarandon… I have a migraine so I can’t think of what these assholes are called. Anti-dem or something?
JJ!!! it’s in Georgia!!!!
Hutchinson was at Mar-a-Lago with Trump after he left WH. Trump and Meadows are reportedly very nervous.
Jonathan Karl says the hearing will be big–and disturbing.
OMG, this poor woman worked for sleazy Steve!
Wow so Dump was so adamant about being driven to the Capitol he tried to GRAB the steering wheel???? This is making Meadows and Dump look soooooo bad.
And throwing china around the state dining room? Crazy and toddler behavior!
Tantrumming bully. Totally in keeping with what we thought based on his public persona.
I have to admit to being surprised he had the physical courage to want to go *toward* the riot. Of course, he may have felt totally protected by his wall of friendly AK-47s and wanted to be sure he got his mug on the teevee as their Dear Leader.
/*gobsmacked*/
I’m in shock right now. Trump went for the throat of his Secret Service agent. He demanded that people with weapons be allowed into his speech because they weren’t going to hurt him. He threw plates of food against the WH walls.
Mark Meadows knew there would be violence on January 6th and did nothing.
And yet everyone around him was too afraid to invoke the 25th. He sent out mob-style threats – in writing – about defecting from Dump World.
I hope Hutchinson has good security.
Thompson: “If suddenly you remember something…”
Mafia shakedown Trump Style
Good.
Unfortunately, that probably means 7 or so
My understanding is in male prisons, child-molesters are the bottom of the bottom. So much so they have to send them to special child-molester only prison.
Not sure for women….can’t imagine it’ll be fun for her. I’ll be livid if she gets a country-club prison environment.
Never forget she was a tool. The actual users have never, so far, seen a day in jail. Male, of course. I know we’re all surprised.
Exactly.
Ensuring a form of voter suppression to keep Rs in power.
This basically makes Black Louisianans 1/2 of a person.
The way they did it, meaning the “we’re letting it stand for now without deciding it and then we’ll get back to it next year,” suggests they know there’s no constitutional way to let it stand.
But this way they get another rigged Nov election, and then next year they probably hope to get away with even huger bullshit than now.
That’s my guess.
These scumrobes are so toxic.
“scumrobes” LOL!