20 Things Established By The January 6th Committee

Robert Reich enumerates 20 things the January 6th Committee established: 

Among other things, the committee has established that:

1. 1. Before Election Day, Trump planned to give a false election victory speech. On Election Day, even though the networks were starting to call the race for Biden, Trump declared victory and demanded that voting counts stop. “This is a fraud on the American public, an embarrassment to our country. We were getting ready to win this election, we did win this election.”

   
   

2. 2. Trump knew he lost. He also knew that there was no evidence of fraud or irregularities sufficient to change the outcome. His Attorney General told him there had been no fraud. His advisors repeatedly told him there was no evidence of fraud sufficient to change the outcome. The Supreme Court rejected his case on December 11. Electors voted on December 14. His senior staff advised him to concede.

    

3. 3. Nonetheless, Trump’s intended to ignore the rule of law to stay in power. He conducted an Oval Office meeting on December 18, during which Trump lawyer Sidney Powell and former national security adviser Michael Flynn proposed that the U.S. military seize state election machines.

    

4. 4. On December 19, just hours after the meeting ended, Trump sent a tweet urging his followers to come to Washington on January 6, and it “will be wild.” The evidence presented made clear that the far-right militia and other figures understood that tweet as a call to violence.

   
   

5. 5. Michael Flynn and Roger Stone, both of whom Trump had pardoned during the time between the election and January 6, had direct relationships with violent right-wing groups. 

   
   

6. 6. Trump knew he was lying when he told the public that Dominion Voting machines were rigged against him, when he told the public there were more votes than voters, and when he told the public about a “vote dump” in Detroit. He purposely and maliciously repeated these lies to the public over and over again.

   
   

7. 7. He knew his allegations of fraud in Georgia were false, but he nonetheless sought to pressure the Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger into giving him the votes he needed, saying “I want to find 11,780 votes.” When the secretary of state demurred, Trump threatened that he’d be prosecuted.

   
   

8. 8. He also tried to pressure election officials in Arizona and Michigan, knowing he lost those states. 

    

9. 9. Knowing he lost the election, he also pressured the Justice Department to change the results of the election until Justice Department officials threatened mass resignation. He sought to name a Justice Department minion as the new Attorney General who then planned to send letters to Trump-friendly state legislatures alleging widespread fraud in their states. The proposed letters would urge these friendly state legislatures to exploit the “failed choice” loophole in antiquated 19th-century laws and substitute their own Trump presidential electors for the Biden electors that had been chosen by the voters on Election Day. Trump’s own top Justice Department officials killed this scheme.

   
   

10. 10. He sought to replace real Biden electors with fake Trump electors on January 6. He knew this was illegal.

    
    

11. 11. He tried to get Vice President Pence to unilaterally disregard the electoral count. Trump knew this was illegal.

    
    

12. 12. He intentionally summoned his supporters to the Capitol, and then, knowing they were armed, intended that they march to the Capitol.

    
    

13. 13. He knew there would be violence that day. He knew people coming to Washington planned to attack the Capitol and that multiple users online were targeting members of Congress. The Secret Service had this information at least 10 days before the attack. On January 6, during his speech on the Ellipse, Trump knew the crowd was armed and dangerous.

    
    

14. 14. He intentionally endangered the safety of Vice President Pence and his family, and members of Congress, on January 6 by tweeting criticism of Pence, which unleashed the mob to go after Pence, chanting “hang Mike Pence.” 

    
    

15. 15. He watched the riots unfold on television for hours without lifting a finger to protect the Vice President, his family, or Members of Congress, despite pleas from Trump family members, White House advisors, and Republican congressional leaders. He spent hours in the dining room next to the Oval Office (from 1:25 pm until 4 pm) watching Fox News coverage of the attack. During this time he called senators to urge them to delay the electoral vote, and he phoned Rudy Giuliani.

    
    

16. 16. He refused to take action, although he could easily have done so. He was repeatedly implored — by his own White House counsel, other White House staff, and members of his family — to condemn the violence, ask rioters to stop and leave the Capitol, and go home. But for 187 minutes he did not. He was a sixty-second walk away from the White House press room.

    
    

17. 17. Instead, he chose to provoke the rioters. When the riot was underway, his first tweet was: “Mike Pence didn't have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country.” In view of White House staffers, this “poured fuel on the fire.”

    
    

18. 18. Rather than call the rioters off, he indicated they were doing the right thing. When House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy urged Trump to take action, Trump responded: “Well, Kevin, I guess they’re just more upset about the election than you are.”

    
    

19. 19. He showed no remorse. At 6:01 pm he tweeted: “These are the things that happen when a victory is stripped away from great patriots. Remember the day forever. Go home with love.”

    
    

20. 20. Even after the 2020 election was certified, he refused to say the election was over. When he finally agreed to address the nation the next evening, he did not want to say words that had been drafted for him — “the election is over.” He was only willing to say “Congress has certified the results.” Trump has never accepted any responsibility for the attack and never acknowledged the deaths of law enforcement officers, because he did not want to be faulted or imply any criticism of the rioters.

The big news is not that a committee of Congress has made a criminal referral to the Justice Department urging that the Department prosecute a former president. The big news is that the committee has compiled overwhelming evidence that the former president has committed serious crimes.

The Jan 6th Committee Has Not Changed American Minds

The chart above is from the Monmouth University Poll -- done between July 28th and August 1st of a nationwide sample of 808 adults, with a 3.5 point margin of error.

If this poll is to be believed (and it is a fairly reliable poll), then the televised hearings of the January 6th committee has not changed many minds. While millions watched the hearings, they were evidently the people who had already made up their mind.

The chart below is also from this poll.

A Majority Approve Of House Comm. Investigating Jan. 6th

The chart reflects the result of the recent Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between June 11th and 14th of a nationwide sample of 1,500 adults (including 1,304 registered voters), with a 3.1 point margin of error for both groups. 

Select Committee Says Evidence Shows Trump Broke Law

This won't surprise many of us. The January 6th Select Committee says there is evidence that Donald Trump committed one or more crimes in his effort to overthrow the results of the 2020 election (which he lost by a large margin). 

Here is part of how The New York Times describes it:

The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol said on Wednesday that there was enough evidence to conclude that former President Donald J. Trump and some of his allies might have conspired to commit fraud and obstruction by misleading Americans about the outcome of the 2020 election and attempting to overturn the result.

In a court filing in a civil case in California, the committee’s lawyers for the first time laid out their theory of a potential criminal case against the former president. They said they had accumulated evidence demonstrating that Mr. Trump, the conservative lawyer John Eastman and other allies could potentially be charged with criminal violations including obstructing an official proceeding of Congress and conspiracy to defraud the American people.

The filing also said there was evidence that Mr. Trump’s repeated lies that the election had been stolen amounted to common law fraud.

The filing disclosed only limited new evidence, and the committee asked the judge in the civil case to review the relevant material behind closed doors. In asserting the potential for criminality, the committee largely relied on the extensive and detailed accounts already made public of the actions Mr. Trump and his allies took to keep him in office after his defeat.

The committee added information from its more than 550 interviews with state officials, Justice Department officials and top aides to Mr. Trump, among others.

It said, for example, that Jason Miller, Mr. Trump’s senior campaign adviser, had told the committee in a deposition that Mr. Trump had been told soon after Election Day by a campaign data expert “in pretty blunt terms” that he was going to lose, suggesting that Mr. Trump was well aware that his months of assertions about a stolen election were false. (Mr. Trump subsequently said he disagreed with the data expert’s analysis, Mr. Miller said, because he thought he could win in court.)

The evidence gathered by the committee “provides, at minimum, a good-faith basis for concluding that President Trump has violated” the obstruction count, the filing, written by Douglas N. Letter, the general counsel of the House, said, adding: “The select committee also has a good-faith basis for concluding that the president and members of his campaign engaged in a criminal conspiracy to defraud the United States.”

The filing said that a “review of the materials may reveal that the president and members of his campaign engaged in common law fraud in connection with their efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.”

Representatives of Mr. Trump did not respond to requests for comment.

January 6th Select Committee Has Support Of The Public

The chart above reflects the results of the NPR / PBS NewsHour / Marist Poll -- done between December 11th and 13th of a nationwide sample of 1,400 adults (including 1,310 registered voters). The margin of error for adults is 4.0 points, and for registered voters is 4.1 points.

The Republicans have done their best to bad-mouth the January 6th Select Committee. They want Americans to believe it is unnecessary, and nothing more than a witch hunt. Fortunately, most people are not buying into the Republican lie.

Only the Republican base has a majority saying it's a witch hunt. All other groups say it is appropriate, and necessary to find out exactly what happened, and who was responsible for it.

Once again, Republicans find themselves in disagreement with a significant majority of Americans!

Biden To Fire "Trumpers" From Military Academy Committees

 

In the final weeks he was in office, Donald Trump placed his most loyal (and incompetent) liars on the service committees of the military academies. Now President Biden is getting rid of them. He has told them to resign or be fired.

Here is Hayes Brown take on this at MSNBC.com:

President Joe Biden is cleaning house. On Wednesday, the White House asked for resignations from more than 10 of former President Donald Trump's appointees to boards that advise three military service academies. It’s an unprecedented move from Biden — and absolutely the correct one.

But to hear the soon-to-be-fired board members gripe about it, you’d think Biden had overturned a core principle of American democracy. The loudest of these voices so far has been Kellyanne Conway, a former senior counselor to Trump. Conway was never in the U.S. Air Force. She has no real connection to the service — but in the closing weeks of the Trump administration, she was given a position on the Air Force Academy Board of Visitors.

She’s yet to attend a single meeting of the board: The last one was held Nov. 18. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin hit pause on new meetings early this year when he instituted a “zero-based review” of 40 advisory committees that provide nonbinding suggestions to the Pentagon on everything from science to military family readiness. (“Zero-based” is corporate jargon implying the review “starts from zero,” in this case making each board defend its existence and current makeup.)

Well, the results are in, and that means Conway and other Trump appointees to the boards of visitors at the Air Force Academy, U.S. Naval Academy and U.S. Military Academy at West Point are out. It’s a list that includes the likes of retired Army Col. Douglas Macgregor — who once advocated martial law at the southern U.S. border and who was most recently a senior adviser for Trump’s last acting defense secretary — and it’s a list that includes former White House press secretary and “Dancing With the Stars” fifth runner-up Sean Spicer.

The response from the Trump appointees has been particularly spicy given how many of them were unfit for the positions in the first place, with almost all of them refusing to resign. Conway posted her response letter, which accuses Biden of using the decision — which has been in the works for months — as a distraction from the deaths of U.S. service members in Afghanistan. . . .

A big deal is also being made over the potential politicization of what have traditionally been nonpartisan positions. But, in this case, these roles were filled with hyperpartisans and crackpots as a thank you from a hyperpartisan crackpot. If anything, this is a move back toward the norm, not away from it, no matter what Conway may claim.

I’m sure this won’t be the last of these announcements. My money is on former Trump campaign staffers Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie getting the boot from the Defense Business Board next. And when the time comes, I say to them the same thing I say to Conway, Spicer and Vought: good riddance.

Speaker Pelosi Appoints A Second Republican To Committee

When the Select Committee to investigate the January 6th Capitol riots was created, Speaker Pelosi was to appoint 8 members and Minority Leader McCarthy was to appoint 5 members.

Pelosi evened the odds just a bit by appointing 7 Democrats and 1 Republican -- Liz Cheney of Wyoming.

But McCarthy was obviously trying to subvert the committee. He delayed appointing anyone until a few days before the committee was to meet -- and then appointed a couple of members that everyone knew would turn the committee into a circus.

But Pelosi banned two of the 5 members that McCarthy selected -- the two (Rep. Banks and Rep. Jordan) most likely to disrupt the committee's proceedings. Angered, McCarthy then withdrew all 5 of his committee picks.

McCarthy had hoped that the move would make the committee look unfair. He has failed in that. There was already one Republican on the committee (Cheney), and now Pelosi has appointed a second. It is Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois. Kinzinger, like Cheney, has been opposed to Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.

I don't like the politics of either Cheney or Kinzinger, but I think both will be good members of the Select Committee -- members that will search for the truth instead of spreading Trump lies.