Before the public hearings, the Select Committee investigating the J6 insurrection had been a model of tight-lipped discretion. All the political pundits had to chew on was who the Committee had subpoenaed and who it had not. And to whom, among the recipients, had the DoJ issued criminal indictments. After four hearings, it has become apparent that many people talked voluntarily, and few subpoenas were necessary.
And the testimony to date seems to have inspired others to come forward. The Committee has now pushed back its last two June hearings until July. Because, as Committee members said,
“We’ve taken in some additional information that’s going to require additional work." Bennie Thompson
“There’s been a deluge of new evidence since we got started." Jamie Raskin
"A mountain of new information.” Zoe Lofgren
[N.B. Thursday’s hearing on the effort to corrupt the Justice Department, will proceed as scheduled.]
While the Committee had postponed a previous hearing due to technical difficulties, it is clear that it has now received a lot of new evidence. And there is no reason to believe it is exculpatory. I imagine many Trump co-conspirators are contemplating cutting a deal.
John Eastman, the lawyer behind the ‘sham slates of electors’ plan, is being eyed by the political cognoscenti as a modern-day John Dean. The President’s man who provided the testimony that changed the tide in the Watergate affair. Another golden prize for the Committee would be getting testimony from Pat Cipollone, Trump's White House Counsel. He had argued against the election suppression plot. And called the Administration plan to submit letters to states urging them to overturn their election results, a “murder/suicide pact”.
The genius of the Committee's strategy to date is its extensive use of Republican and non-partisan testimony. Putting on Democratic witnesses would give Fox News, its media cousins, and their political poodles, a hook to hang their denial on.
Those dismal liars have their work cut out for them. Top Republican state officials with no reason to deny Trump a victory, have outlined the heavy-handed and crude strong-arm tactics used by the election loser and his complaisant lawyers to overthrow America’s democracy.
Now the testimony offered by these courageous Republican officials from Rusty Bowers, the Speaker of the Arizona House, to Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s Secretary of State, and Gabriel Sterling, top Georgia election official — as well as previous testimony offered by other current and ex-GOP officials — has caused a shift in public opinion.
Even some Foxers are seeing the light. Martha McCallum, in reaction to Tuesday's hearing, said,
“It is very compelling and the lack of evidence [of election fraud] is the huge stunning clear moment here where these people are saying look I supported you, please give me something to work with, and it simply doesn’t materialize.”
The election officials testified that Trump’s lawyers, particularly Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis, repeatedly promised evidence of election fraud but never produced any. We have already heard Trump's ex-Attorney General, Bill Barr, call the claims that the election was fixed “bullshit”. And yesterday, we heard Bowers testify
“My recollection: He [Giuliani] said, we’ve got lots of theories, we just don’t have the evidence. And I don’t know if that was a gaffe or maybe he didn’t think through what he said. But both myself and others in my group, the three in my group and my counsel both remembered that specifically and afterward we kind of laughed about it.” [Bolding mine]
There has been compelling testimony from a Capitol police officer, Carol Edwards who described the scene on Jan 6, before she was knocked unconscious by the rioters.
"What I saw was just a war scene. It was something like I had seen out of the movies. I could not believe my eyes. There were officers on the ground. They were bleeding. They were throwing up. I saw friends with blood all over their faces. I was slipping in people's blood. I was catching people as they fell. It was carnage. It was chaos."
And from a dedicated Georgia election official, Shaye Moss, who was dumped on by Trump, along with her mother "Lady Ruby," who testified
“The president of the United States is supposed to represent every American. Not to target one. And he targeted me, Lady Ruby, a small business owner, a mother, a proud American citizen who stood up to help Fulton county run an election in the middle of the pandemic.”
The human cost of the big lie rips the heartstrings. We worry about jackbooted thugs crushing American democracy, but in a way, the idea is too big, too slippery. To hear eyewitness testimony of blood and gore — and to hear how members of one family, who were only doing their job, are now living in fear with what seems like PTSD, afraid to go out or even speak their names — is to put a human face to the loser’s callous and indifferent cruelty.
In more good news, the Department of Justice, too long silent on the sidelines, is now rumbling to life. A week ago, it requested from the J6 committee all the transcripts of witness testimony. Tellingly it said that the lack of the transcripts was hampering an ongoing criminal probe.
It did not say whether the probe focused on the events at the Capitol on January 6th. Or whether it was looking at the root causes. But as the House information is expansive, the hope is that so is the DoJ’s investigation.
It seems likely it is, as today it served subpoenas on two people connected to the mechanics of the election fraud and not to the events on 1/6.
Most importantly, the Democrats may lose the House this year, effectively shutting down any investigation by that body. But DoJ will still be around for two more years.
Fingers crossed.
The J6 Committee & DoJ pick up the pace. Has the wall of election denial cracked?
I anxiously await today's testimony, but would love to be a fly on Trump's wall to see his reaction. i imagine he is fuming, thank you Pitt