- Latest Israel-Hamas war news: ICJ to hold hearings on Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory The Washington Post
- THE HAGUE – The International Court of Justice (ICJ) holds public hearings in the advisory proceedings – State of Palestine Welcome to the United Nations
- ‘Our people are here to stay:’ World Court hears arguments over Israeli occupation of Palestinian-claimed land CNN
- Israel-Hamas War: Live Updates The New York Times
- ICJ on Israeli occupation of Palestine live: Hearings begin | Israel War on Gaza News Al Jazeera English
Tag Archives: hearings
THE HAGUE – The International Court of Justice (ICJ) holds public hearings on the preliminary objections raised by the Russian Federation in the case Ukraine v. Russian Federation – first round of oral argument of the Russian Federation – UN Web TV
- THE HAGUE – The International Court of Justice (ICJ) holds public hearings on the preliminary objections raised by the Russian Federation in the case Ukraine v. Russian Federation – first round of oral argument of the Russian Federation UN Web TV
- World Court to hear Russian objections to Ukraine genocide case Reuters
- Ukraine and its allies battle Russian bid to have genocide case tossed out of the UN’s top court The Associated Press
- Ukraine and its allies battle Russian bid to have genocide case tossed out of the UN’s top court The Hill
- Ukraine vs. Russia: Genocide proceedings at UN’s top court DW (English)
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Instead of fizzing out, the January 6 hearings are gaining momentum ahead of prime time testimony
This summer’s hearings by the House’s January 6 select committee have been building momentum — and audience interest — in the run-up to Thursday’s prime time session.
One might have expected the TV ratings to dwindle over time, since the story of Donald Trump and the Capitol attack has been so well established, and summer tends to be a sluggish news period. But the opposite has happened, at least judging by cable ratings data: CNN and MSNBC viewership has been increasing.
The opening prime time hearing on June 9 was the highest-rated across the board, of course, since a greater number of people are home in the evening and able to watch on TV. But ever since the committee settled on an afternoon window, for hearing #3 on June 16, tune-in has been growing. CNN averaged 1.5 million viewers during the hearing that day; 2.1 million for hearing #4; 2.4 million for hearing #5; and 2.6 million for hearing #6. MSNBC has gained audience over time too.
The cable outlets may be taking some share from broadcast, but channels like ABC and CBS have continued to draw eyeballs for the hearings as well. Major news sites have noticed traffic spikes for 1/6 scoops. And Google Trends has shown healthy spikes for “when is next january 6 committee hearing” searches all summer long.
What does this portend for Thursday’s prime time hearing? Hard to say. I don’t know if it’s realistic to expect the summer season “finale” to surpass the “premiere.” But the committee has certainly succeeded in keeping the attention of America’s political junkies. Trump devotees are the exception to that rule, but even they have dropped the “nobody’s watching the hearings” talking point that was trotted out in June. In a streaming and on-demand world, the total reach of the hearings to date is unknowable, but many tens of millions of Americans have soaked up the committee’s findings, which is no small thing in a fractured media space…
Cable and broadcast coverage plans
NBC, ABC and CBS will pre-empt regular prime time programming for the hearing. PBS will also carry it live. On CNN, Jake Tapper and Anderson Cooper will anchor special coverage beginning at 7pm ET. On MSNBC, Rachel Maddow, Joy Reid and Nicolle Wallace will do the same. At midnight, Don Lemon will take over on CNN and Stephanie Ruhle will take over on MSNBC.
As for Fox News, well, the network has not responded to repeated requests for comment about its coverage plans. Every time Fox News has shown the daytime hearings, its ratings have tanked, so all signs point to a repeat of the first prime time hearing: The flagship channel will stick with Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity; the much-lower-rated Fox Business will show the hearing; and Fox-affiliated broadcast stations will be offered the Fox Biz feed as an option. Generally speaking, Fox and Newsmax garner audience loyalty by griping about the hearings…
It’s still happening
“As committee members try to get to the bottom of the past attempt to steal the election, our democracy remains under attack by the same forces,” Jake Tapper said as he opened “The Lead” on Wednesday. Among the examples he cited:
>> In Wisconsin, WISN in Milwaukee broke the news that a top state lawmaker “says former President Trump called him last week in another push to decertify 2020 presidential results…”
>> In Arizona, the state’s Republican party censured its Republican House speaker, Rusty Bowers, after Bowers testified to the 1/6 committee…
>> In Maryland, GOP primary voters chose Dan Cox, who is “a big disseminator of Trump’s election lies,” Tapper said…
Tapper made the point that Trump is far from alone: Lawmakers, party chairs, former White House aides are “still spreading Trump’s lies. And they aren’t even just saying it. Many of them are campaigning on it and winning Republican primaries on it, even as they fight to undo the country’s election laws today, right now. The clear and present threat to American democracy continues.”
Jan. 6 hearings loom large in Wyoming’s referendum on Cheney and Trump
CASPER, Wyo. — Few in Wyoming seem all that confident predicting what will happen in Liz Cheney’s primary election, even though the general consensus is that she faces an uphill battle to retain her seat in Congress.
Only a few polls have been released, and they’ve shown Cheney down by large margins. Most Wyoming political insiders say it’s hard to poll the state, especially when it’s hard to know how many voters will turn out and who they will be. But they also agree that even if the polls are off to some degree, it’s clear that Cheney is well behind her main opponent, Harriet Hageman, who has the backing of former President Donald Trump.
But with a month to go before the Aug. 16 primary, in a House election that has major implications for the future of the national Republican Party, there is a sense among some that there are ripples of movement that are hard to detect except through private conversations.
“If you’d have asked me six months ago whether Cheney stood a chance, I would have said, ‘Not in the world.’ But now I think that she’s developing support,” Tom Lubnau, a Republican former state House speaker, told Yahoo News. “She’s way far behind. I don’t know if there’s enough time or momentum to beat Hageman.”
The Jan. 6 committee hearings in Washington, Lubnau said, are “starting to peel back the layers” of how the assault on the Capitol was also an attack on democracy.
Lubnau, who now practices law and has endorsed lesser-known GOP primary candidate Denton Knapp, a retired Army colonel who is his childhood friend, said there are a few different types of voters in Wyoming.
Some of these voters respect Cheney for standing up to Trump and have no problem saying so. Others, who support Hageman, feel Cheney betrayed them by confronting Trump over his attempt to overthrow the 2020 election, or “can’t separate being mad over Jan. 6 with an entire endorsement of the Democratic agenda.”
And then there is another group that is “keeping their mouth shut and don’t want to get in an argument but are going to vote for Cheney,” Lubnau said. That last group “is growing, but I don’t know if it’s growing large enough to overcome the hole that Rep. Cheney dug for herself.”
“I’m not sure of the exact statistics, but about 60% of us make our decisions based solely upon emotions, and Rep. Cheney is one of those rational decision makers who makes her decisions based upon the facts. And so I don’t know if she can develop enough emotion to sway the emotional voters,” Lubnau said.
Other Cheney supporters are less sanguine and express concern about her chances of winning.
“I’m cautious and concerned … I’m not optimistic, but I’m hanging in there,” said Joanne Tweedy, a Cheney backer from Gillette. “I call people every day. Anybody I can talk to and change their mind, I do.”
Tweedy told Yahoo News that she does not even have a Cheney sign up in her yard. “I have neighbors that may or may not be happy if I put one up, so I just don’t want the hateful thoughts and comments.”
“I know a lot of quiet people who say, ‘We’re going to vote for Liz, we just don’t want our name on those surveys,’” Tweedy said. “I just don’t know how many that is.”
Numerous Cheney supporters expressed hope that the congresswoman’s political career will merely enter another chapter if she loses to Hageman, managing their expectations for the near term while also predicting that she will run for president in 2024 no matter what.
“Don’t worry about her. Don’t get concerned about her. Whatever she is doing, she knows exactly what she’s doing, and if it doesn’t work, there’ll be something else she’ll be doing,” former Wyoming Sen. Alan Simpson, a Cheney supporter, told Yahoo News.
Simpson also said that the Jan. 6 committee, which Cheney helps lead, is gradually giving her a boost. “Every day that goes by, they strip some of the sheen off of Donald J. Trump. When this primary comes up, Aug. 16th, they will have stripped the emperor’s clothes,” he said.
Simpson added that the simplicity of Cheney’s recent challenge to Hageman — daring her to acknowledge that the 2020 election was legitimate and not stolen — is sapping Hageman’s momentum.
In the July 1 debate between Cheney, Hageman and three other candidates for Wyoming’s lone seat in the House of Representatives, Cheney laid down a gauntlet.
“I’d be interested to know whether or not my opponent Ms. Hageman is willing to say here tonight that the election was not stolen. She knows it wasn’t stolen,” Cheney said.
“I think that she can’t say that it wasn’t stolen because she’s completely beholden to Donald Trump. And if she says it wasn’t stolen, he will not support her. So we’ve got to be honest.”
Cheney also pointed out that Bill Stepien, who is now advising Hageman, was Trump’s campaign manager in 2020 and was one of many close Trump advisers who testified under oath before the Jan. 6 committee that the election wasn’t stolen and that Trump knew this as early as election night.
Cheney also turned the word “betrayed” against Hageman, who has repeatedly accused her of betraying Wyoming by standing up to Trump.
“I think that there’s a real tragedy that’s occurring, and the tragedy is that there are politicians in this country, beginning with Donald Trump, who have lied to the American people, and people have been betrayed,” Cheney said.
“He consistently has said that the election was stolen when it wasn’t, when it’s absolutely clear, the courts decided, the courts determined the outcome.”
Hageman, in response, said the Jan. 6 committee’s process has been “totally unfair.” Voters, she said, are “terribly concerned about the lack of due process” and “that there’s no ability to confront or cross-examine witnesses.”
“You might have 15 hours of videotaped depositions, and the committee shows 13 seconds of something, or two and a half minutes of something,” Hageman said.
Hageman also tried to duck Cheney’s question, instead saying there are “serious questions about the 2020 election.”
Her basis for this assertion was $500 million that was donated by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, to help election administration around the country in 2020, after Congress failed to allocate enough funding to conduct an election during a pandemic.
(Yahoo News did a detailed examination last December of the criticisms lodged against Zuckerberg’s donations, and found there was little evidence that the money helped Joe Biden or other Democrats in a meaningful way.)
Yet the belief that the 2020 election was rigged for Biden continues to trump facts among some Republican voters in Wyoming. “The insurrection was before Jan. 6,” said Bob Ide, a state Senate candidate who was part of the crowd outside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, as it was being stormed by Trump supporters trying to stop certification of the results. Ide called the Jan. 6 hearings a “show trial.”
Hageman supporter Marti Halverson, an active member of the Wyoming Republican Party in the western part of the state, backed Cheney in 2020 and hosted the congresswoman at her home that year. But she stopped supporting Cheney once she voted to impeach Trump after the Jan. 6 insurrection, Halverson told Yahoo News.
She said Cheney’s “most recent offense” was to vote for legislation last month intended to reduce gun violence. Cheney was one of 14 House Republicans to support the measure, which passed the Senate with 15 Republican votes and became law.
Halverson, much like Hageman, called the Jan. 6 hearings “so one-sided as to be laughable” but also said she is “not glued to them.”
“I have better things to do,” Halverson said.
Even some of Cheney’s supporters expressed discontent with the Jan. 6 committee to Yahoo News.
“I thought the committee was supposed to be finding out if there was any un-American activities going on with the event that day, but I think it’s gotten clear off from that. I think it’s taken after Trump completely, and maybe it’s a little misguided now,” said state Sen. James Anderson, who has endorsed Cheney and is encouraging Wyomingites to vote for her.
Another prominent Cheney supporter, state Rep. Landon Brown, said Cheney’s candidacy is about more than just who represents Wyoming in Congress.
It is a test, he said, of whether the national Republican Party can stand for a set of principles and for the Constitution, or whether it will walk further down the path of obedience and submission to Trump, who has already shown no regard for the rule of law or the will of the people.
“We have to think about what the outcome of this election ultimately means to our country, because this is not just Wyoming,” Brown told Yahoo News. “This is the outcome of our entire country that we’re looking at now.”
Simpson, the former senator, put it this way: “For me it’s really simple. Liz has attacked the root cause of a man who is so filled with himself and full of himself that he would actually get on the phone and tell somebody to change 11,000 votes in Georgia, or call somebody to say, ‘Why don’t you organize something in Michigan and send us a fake bunch of electors?’
“Now, for me, who is a poor old soul who practiced law and served in Congress — that, to me, is the baldest, boldest, the most egregious rape of the Constitution and all that America stands for,” Simpson said.
Jan 6 hearings latest – live: Pat Cipollone talks to committee at last as two hearings planned for next week
Biden jokes ‘unfortunately that’s probably Trump calling me’ as phone goes off during speec
The 6 January select committee is finally talking to former White House counsel Pat Cipollone, who arrived for a closed-door interview today after months of outreach. Mr Cipollone’s name has featured prominently in recent public hearings, where other witnesses discussed his role in trying to prevent Donald Trump from deploying the Justice Department to illegally overturn the 2020 election.
The committee is reportedly planning to hold another primetime hearing on Thursday 14 July, this in addition to a session on Tuesday 12 July that will unpack evidence on how the crowd that stormed the Capitol was gathered. It is expected to focus in particular on extremist elements including the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump has taken to Truth Social to defend his campaign to pressure Georgia state officials into overturning the 2020 election, insisting that his phonecalls to them were “perfect”. He is facing a grand jury investigation into his actions by the district attorney in the state’s Fulton County, who has subpoenaed certain of his close allies.
Wisconsin bans drop boxes as “election security” effort ramps up
Unmanned drop boxes used across the country by voters to cast their ballots are now banned in Wisconsin following a ruling by the state’s Supreme Court.
The conservative-controlled court ruled that voters must now deliver their absentee ballots by mail or in-person to their clerks, a decision that is likely to disproportionately impact Democratic areas.
The ruling could have a significant impact on the next presidential election. Joe Biden won Wisconsin by fewer than 21,000 votes in 2020, and the state is likely to be a battleground again in 2024.
Ballot drop boxes have been used for years in Wisconsin without issue.
Ban on drop boxes in Wisconsin likely to disproportionately impact Democratic voters
Republicans have sought to ban the use of drop boxes while promoting false claims of election fraud
Andrew Naughtie8 July 2022 16:45
Pat Cipollone’s Jan 6 interview underway
After months of negotiation, former White House counsel Pat Cipollone is currently talking to the Jan 6 panel behind closed doors. It’s a moment that Donald Trump has clearly been dreading, since Mr Cipollone was present on the day of the attack and is said by other witnesses to have been near the then-president when staffers were imploring him to call the rioters off.
Andrew Naughtie8 July 2022 16:15
Analysis: Why Trump should be worried about the Georgia investigation
As Senator Lindsey Graham refuses to comply with a subpoena calling him to testify to investigators in Fulton County, Georgia, Richard Hall takes a look at the probe into the Trump world’s efforts to influence the 2020 election outcome in the state – and explains why the case really is something Donald Trump should be worried about.
Although the subpoenas do not necessarily imply that the recipients are the subjects of inquiry, they do represent the closest a criminal investigation into election interference has reached Mr Trump and his inner circle…
This week’s subpoenas are the clearest sign yet that the investigation is making progress, according to Norman Eisen, the former special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee during the first impeachment of Donald Trump and senior fellow in governance studies at Brookings.
“I think this is a sign that the prosecutor moving fast, she’s driving hard and there is a lot of legal jeopardy for Trump and his associates,” he told The Independent.
He added that the Georgia investigation was the “single greatest legal threat” to Mr Trump and his fellow travellers.
“Having the prosecutor that has the best-fitting state law, some of the best evidence, including the smoking gun tape of January 2, and who has the character and experience to actually prosecute the president is. So, yes, I think it is,” he added.
Read the full piece below.
Why Trump has reason to be worried about a criminal investigation in Georgia
A criminal probe in Georgia may represent the “single greatest legal threat” to the former president
Andrew Naughtie8 July 2022 15:55
Steve Bannon’s defence attorney backs out
As Steve Bannon prepares to face trial in his contempt of Congress case after refusing to cooperate with a Jan 6 committee subpoena, one of his legal team has backed out of the case.
Mr Costello, who has also represented Rudy Giuliani, has seen his emails and phone records targeted by the FBI as the case proceeds, as federal law enforcement investigate whether he himself was involved in the potentially criminal act of having Mr Bannon refuse to comply.
The resulting FBI “dragnet” reportedly ensnared the records of multiple people across the US with the name Bob Costello.
Andrew Feinberg has the story.
Steve Bannon’s lawyer asks to withdraw from contempt case because he may be a witness
Former Trump White House adviser Steve Bannon goes on trial for criminal contempt of Congress next month
Andrew Naughtie8 July 2022 15:20
Pat Cipollone testifying to Jan 6 panel
Today marks a major breakthrough for the 6 January select committee as Pat Cipollone, who was White House Counsel during Donald Trump’s post-2020 election meltdown, finally sits down to talk to the panel behind closed doors.
The panel has put pressure on Mr Cipollone to contribute to its investigation for some time, with suggestions at the last public hearing that he, like others, has been pressured to keep quiet by some unspecified person or persons in the Trump orbit.
Mr Trump took the news of Mr Cipollone’s cooperation badly.
“Why would a future President of the United States want to have candid and important conversations with his White House Counsel,” Mr Trump wrote on Truth Social, “if he thought there was even a small chance that this person, essentially acting as a ‘lawyer’ for the Country, may some day be brought before a partisan and openly hostile Committee in Congress, or even a fair and reasonable Committee, to reveal the inner secrets of foreign policy or other important matters. So bad for the USA!”
Ex-Trump White House counsel Pat Cipollone to testify before January 6 committee
Legal expert reportedly warned that then-president could face charges for ‘every crime imaginable’ if he marched to the Capitol with his supporters on the day of the riot
Andrew Naughtie8 July 2022 14:45
Tucker Carlson not running for president
The thrust of Tucker Carlson’s show on Fox News has grown only darker since the end of the Trump presidency, with the most-watched host in cable news trading in increasingly paranoid conspiracy theories and overtly bigoted rhetoric about LGBT+ people, people of color, and assorted other groups.
Such is Mr Carlson’s popularity among the hardcore GOP base that there has long been speculation about his political future – but in a rare interview this week, he made clear that a presidential run was off the cards. “I don’t think that way,” he said; “I don’t want power, I’ve never wanted power. I’m annoyed by things and I want them to change, but I’ve never been motivated by the desire to control people.”
Tucker Carlson says he’ll never run for president
‘I have zero ambition’, Fox host declares
Andrew Naughtie8 July 2022 14:05
Georgia Guidestones destruction presaged by Trump ‘bombing’ memes
Memes showing former US president Donald Trump ‘bombing’ the Georgia Guidestones appeared on his own social media platform days before the monument was attacked, a report says.
The photoshopped image featuring Mr Trump appeared on Truth Social on 2 July – four days before the mysterious 18-foot granite monument was damaged in an alleged explosion.
According to the DailyDot, the meme was posted by a verified user on the Trump-owned social media site.
It had earlier appeared on Twitter and was shared by other users.
Memes showing Trump ‘bombing’ Georgia Guidestones appeared online days before attack
Photoshopped image appeared amid GOP candidate’s campaign
Andrew Naughtie8 July 2022 13:25
Analysis: DeSantis 2024?
One of the main effects of the 6 January hearings has been to take some of the allure out of a Trump re-election campaign, with even some Republicans who have supported him in public up till now starting to openly advise against it. That in turn raises the question of who might run instead – and as Eric Garcia writes, few are as well-placed as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
The Florida governor has become the conservative golden boy in the past two years by virtue of his lax approach to combating the Covid-19 pandemic and his tough-guy posturing, as well as some significant policy wins for conservatives He now seems to be attracting attention not just from Republicans, but from Democrats too. California Governor Gavin Newsom, whose profile has risen ever since he beat back a conservative-backed recall last year, put out an ad over the holiday weekend bashing DeSantis and urging people who don’t like him to come to California.
All of this means that DeSantis’s stock has risen. But it’s not guaranteed he can win.
What insiders say about Ron DeSantis standing for president in 2024
It’s looking increasingly like the Florida governor and Donald Trump are each other’s worst nightmare
Andrew Naughtie8 July 2022 12:45
Hardline GOP Senator on the 2024 campaign trail
Tom Cotton, the hard-right Arkansas Senator who infamously called for the military to be sent in to crack down on anti-racism protests in the summer of 2020, recently told a room of donors that he would not be put off running for president if Donald Trump announces another tilt a the White House. And now he appears to be doing the Iowa groudwork that’s compulsory for anyone seeking a presidential nomination…
Andrew Naughtie8 July 2022 12:09
What will happen at Tuesday’s Jan 6 hearing?
The next session of the Jan 6 committee, which is scheduled for Tuesday, July 12th at 10:00am ET, is set to focus on the role played by extremist groups who participated in the Capitol riot, and on the ways they were coordinated – possibly with the involvement of Trump confidantes.
Politico quotes committee member Jamie Raskin giving this assessment: “Our investigation shows that there was a tremendous convergence of interests between the domestic violent extremist groups and the broader MAGA movement. This hearing will be the moment when one sees both the convergence of efforts at a political coup with the insurrectionary mob violence. We see how these two streams of activity become one.”
For more on the Oath Keepers, whose leaders have been charged with seditious conspiracy over their role in the events of 6 January, here is Richard Hall’s report on leader Stewart Rhodes.
How Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes went from ballroom dancing to sedition charges
Stewart Rhodes cycled through ideologies and conspiracies before he become obsessed with Donald Trump, writes Richard Hall. He will soon face charges of organising one of the most serious attempts to overthrow the government in modern history
Andrew Naughtie8 July 2022 11:30
The Memo: First phase of Jan. 6 hearings sharpens dangers for Trump
Five down, some more to go.
The first phase of the public hearings into the Jan. 6 hearings ended on Thursday, with dramatic testimony focused on the efforts by former President Trump and his allies to pressure the Department of Justice.
House Select Committee Chair Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) says the hearings will now pause before resuming next month.
The punctuation mark is the perfect moment to assess the impact of the five hearings so far.
They haven’t fundamentally altered the electoral landscape — but nobody really expected they would.
Yet they have been compelling enough to surpass expectations, hold the attention of much of the public and cause new problems for Trump.
The former president, predictably but tellingly, has lambasted the proceedings.
In aggregate, the hearings have portrayed Trump and his most fervid advisors as pushing a de facto coup while ignoring voluminous evidence that the 2020 election was untainted by any large-scale fraud.
The committee’s narrative has been uninterrupted by voices defending Trump. Its only Republican members are co-chair Rep. Liz Cheney (Wyo,.) and Rep. Adam Kinzinger (Ill.) both of whom are strong critics of the former president.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s (R-Calif.) decision to pull GOP involvement from the committee at its inception last year is being subject to increased second-guessing.
McCarthy pulled the plug after Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) refused to accept two especially staunch Trump allies, Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Jim Banks (R-Ind.), as members of the panel.
But now people from Trump himself to Trump-skeptical Republicans regard that decision as a sizable strategic mistake.
“It was really stupid. It was a tremendous error,” said Liz Mair, a political consultant who has advised numerous GOP candidates and was previously the online communications director at the Republican National Committee.
“I am not in general a huge fan of the people who would have wanted on [as pro-Trump Republicans] but he is going to come out looking far worse than if they were there.”
Trump himself said in a recent interview with Punchbowl News that “it would have been very smart” to put Republicans supportive of him on the panel “to just have a voice.”
Instead the seven Democrats and two anti-Trump Republicans on the panel have showcased a remarkable procession of moments.
Big TV audiences have seen a video clip of the former president’s elder daughter, Ivanka Trump, say she accepted the view of then-Attorney General Bill Barr that there was no significant election fraud. Barr himself has been shown several times referring to such claims as “bullshit.”
State-level Republican officials such as Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, have testified to the barrage of personal threats they received after resisting pressure to flip the election results in their states.
Private figures such as Capitol Police officer Caroline Edwards and former elections worker Shaye Moss have given moving accounts of their experiences.
At the first public hearing, watched by around 20 million people in primetime, Edwards recalled the “carnage” that she saw on Jan. 6. At Tuesday’s hearing, Moss recounted her distress when she and her mother were falsely accused of being involved in election fraud in Georgia.
The hearings writ large “have had a big substantive impact, even though so much of this happened in public,” said Julian Zelizer, a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University.
“They have shown how much intentionality was behind an effort to overturn an election, how many people understood that this was just a campaign based on false information, and how this was all a more orchestrated effort than people thought, not just on Jan. 6 but through the whole thing.”
But Zelizer, like many others, is skeptical that the hearings will have a direct impact on the standing of the two major parties, even with the midterm elections little more than four months away.
The reasons are straightforward.
Opinions about Trump and Jan. 6 are almost cast in concrete at this stage. Democratic voters already view him as directly culpable, and his staunchest loyalists never will.
In addition, a combination of a fragmented media environment and the fact that Trump is 17 months gone from office deprives these hearings of the kind of seismic impact the Watergate hearings had a half-century ago.
Still, there may be some impact around the edges.
An ABC News-Ipsos survey published on Sunday showed a modest increase in the number of Americans who believe Trump should be criminally charged for his behavior. The figure now stands at 58 percent, according to the poll, up from 52 percent in an ABC News-Washington Post poll in early May.
The Washington political world is also abuzz with talk about whether the hearings have damaged Trump as a potential 2024 GOP nominee.
The hearings have served as one more reminder of how much tumult and trauma the 45th president always brings in his wake.
A New Hampshire poll on Wednesday, showing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) edging ahead of Trump among likely GOP primary voters in the state, further fueled this speculation.
“There is a significant percentage of Republican voters — I would say 50 percent and maybe higher — who if you ask them if they approve of Donald Trump, they will say yes,” said GOP strategist Dan Judy.
“If he is the only game in town, they will support him in 2024. But if there is anyone else out there who brings a little bit of the Trump style without that kind of baggage, they are very open to supporting such a person.”
Trump himself later Wednesday posted a poll to his favored social network, Truth Social, that showed him far ahead of DeSantis with Republicans nationwide.
As is so often the case with the former president, the supposed show of strength seemed to actually betray some vulnerability.
The former president has suffered some damage so far.
Now, the question is whether the panel will deepen those wounds in its final hearings.
The Memo is a reported column by Niall Stanage.
5 takeaways from the fifth day of January 6 hearings
The hearing kicked off mere hours after federal investigators raided the home of Jeffrey Clark, who was one of the key Justice Department figures who was involved in Trump’s schemes. He has denied any wrongdoing related to January 6.
Here are takeaways from Thursday’s hearing.
Thursday’s hearing underscored the role that Trump’s Republican allies in Congress played in furthering his efforts to try to overturn the election — and how many of them sought pardons after January 6.
The House select committee in particular zeroed in on the efforts of Rep. Scott Perry, the Pennsylvania Republican who connected Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark to the White House in December 2020.
CNN has previously reported on the role that Perry played, and the committee in court filings released text messages Perry exchanged with White House chief of staff Mark Meadows about Clark.
“He wanted Mr. Clark — Mr. Jeff Clark to take over the Department of Justice,” Cassidy Hutchinson, a former Meadows aide, said about Perry in a clip of her deposition that was played at Thursday’s hearing.
The committee also unveiled new details about Republican members of Congress seeking pardons after January 6, including Perry and Reps. Mo Brooks of Alabama and Matt Gaetz of Florida.
“President Trump asked me to send you this letter. This letter is also pursuant to a request from Matt Gaetz,” said an email Brooks sent to the White House in January 2021, according to the committee. “As such, I recommend that president give general (all purpose) pardons to the following groups of people.”
The email included a group of the names of “every congressman and senator who voted to reject the electoral college vote submissions of Arizona and Pennsylvania.”
Thursday’s hearing was led by Rep. Adam Kinzinger, an Illinois Republican who has largely been ostracized by the Republican conference for his role on the January 6 committee.
“My colleagues up here also take an oath. Some of them failed to uphold theirs and instead chose to spread the big lie,” Kinzinger said before discussing pardons.
Kinzinger is retiring at the end of his term.
Inside a December 2020 Oval Office meeting
The hearing brought to life a high-stakes Oval Office meeting in December 2020, where Trump considered firing the acting attorney general and installing Clark, who was willing to use the powers of federal law enforcement to encourage state lawmakers to overturn Trump’s loss.
Going into these summer hearings, we already knew a lot about the meeting. But on Thursday, for the first time, we heard live testimony from some of the Justice Department officials who were in the room, including Rosen, the then-acting attorney general. (He survived the meeting, after Trump was told that there would be mass resignations at the Justice Department if he replaced Rosen with Clark.)
Trump White House lawyer Eric Herschmann said Clark was repeatedly “clobbered over the head” during the meeting. He told the committee that he called Clark a “f—ing a–hole” and said his plans would’ve been illegal. He also said Clark’s plan to send letters to battleground states was “nuts.”
In videotaped testimony that was played Thursday, Donoghue said he eviscerated Clark’s credentials during the meeting, explaining that Clark was woefully underqualified to serve as attorney general.
“You’re an environmental lawyer. How about you go back to your office, and we’ll call you when there’s an oil spill,” Donoghue said in the deposition, describing what he told Clark at the White House meeting.
Donoghue said then-White House Counsel Pat Cipollone called Clark’s plan a “murder-suicide pact.”
Donoghue himself described Clark’s plan as “impossible” and “absurd.”
“It’s never going to happen,” Donoghue said of the plan. “And it’s going to fail.”
Thanks to the pushback from Rosen, Donoghue, Herschmann, Cipollone, and perhaps others, Trump didn’t follow through with his plan, which would’ve put the country in uncharted waters, and would have increased the chances of Trump successfully pulling off his coup attempt.
Italian satellites and seizing voting machines: White House pushes conspiracy theory
The three witnesses who testified Thursday made clear that Trump had attempted to use all the levers of the federal government to help validate his claim that the election was stolen and ultimately overturn the legitimate outcome in the lead-up to January 6.
They described how top officials at the highest levels of government had been pushed to investigate conspiracy theories that originated from fringe corners of the internet as Trump sought to validate what were ultimately baseless claims about widespread voter fraud.
Then-Secretary of Defense Chris Miller even contacted a counterpart in Rome, at the White House’s request, to investigate a conspiracy theory that Italian satellites had changed votes from Trump to Joe Biden.
The conspiracy theory, which CNN has previously reported was among those that then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows pushed top national security officials to investigate, was characterized as “pure insanity” by former Justice Department official Richard Donoghue, who was also asked to look into the claim.
The former Justice Department officials also detailed how Trump himself had urged them and senior officials at the Department of Homeland Security to seize voting machines from state governments in pursuit of the same — all without cause for taking such an unprecedented step.
“Why don’t you guys just seize machines?” Trump said during a White House meeting in late December 2020, according to testimony from Donoghue.
Using the Justice Department, or any other federal agency, to seize voting machines would have been an unprecedented step but Trump made clear that he wanted his allies to pursue it as an option.
“Get Ken Cuccinelli on the phone,” Trump yelled to his secretary after Justice Department officials told him that DHS had expertise in voting machines and determined there was nothing to warrant seizing them, according to Rosen.
Rosen confirmed Thursday he had never told Trump that DHS could seize voting machines. CNN has previously reported that Trump pushed the Justice Department and DHS to seize voting machines.
CNN has also previously reported that Trump allies had drafted executive orders that would have had the military and DHS seize voting machines had they been signed by Trump — but they ultimately were not.
A toned-down hearing featured vivid description of Trump’s pressure campaign
Thursday’s proceedings featured testimony from three lawyers who described behind-the-scenes happenings at the Justice Department and White House. It was a departure from Tuesday’s and earlier hearings, which featured emotional testimony from election workers, and included jarring video montages of the carnage at the Capitol.
But even if there weren’t rhetorical fireworks, the substance of the testimony was essential to understanding the breadth of Trump’s efforts to subvert the 2020 election. The former Justice Department officials described what they saw and heard as Trump tried to enlist them to help him stay in power — and how he tried to oust them when they refused to do his bidding.
The material was dense at times. The witnesses reconstructed White House meetings and phone calls with Trump. They were asked to dissect their handwritten notes of some of these interactions — which is something you more often see at criminal trials, and less commonly at a congressional hearing.
Still, the witnesses’ steady testimony shed new light on events that we’ve known about for more than a year. And the entire hearing evoked memories of the Nixon era, because it was all about how a sitting president tried to weaponize the powers of federal law enforcement to help his political campaign.
Shocking raid of Clark home preceded hearing
The raid by federal investigators of Clark’s northern Virginia home preceded the revelations of Clark’s 2020 actions at the hearing. Lawmakers were caught off guard, but for the first time in a while, it seemed like federal investigators may have been heeding their public calls to finally take some action.
The raid occurred on Wednesday but was reported on Thursday morning. It’s unclear which government entity was behind the raid, and it’s not publicly known what triggered the search of his home, or what investigators were looking for.
Even with these unanswered questions, it’s significant that federal investigators took such an overt step — raiding Clark’s home — against one of the most prominent figures in Trump’s post-elections schemes.
The committee was hoping to turn Clark into a household name Thursday, by eliciting testimony from top Justice Department officials about how he tried to abuse law enforcement powers to help Trump overturn the 2020 results in states that he lost. With the raid, it looks like the committee got its wish.
This story has been updated with additional developments Thursday.
Donald Trump is raging on Truth Social and demanding ‘equal time’ on national TV amid the January 6 committee’s primetime hearings
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Donald Trump complained about not being given “equal time” to air his baseless voter fraud claims.
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“I DEMAND EQUAL TIME!!!” the former president wrote in a post on Truth Social.
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Days earlier, Trump released a 12-page statement slamming the January 6 panel’s investigation.
Former President Donald Trump raged on Truth Social on Thursday, demanding equal airtime on national TV amid the January 6 committee’s primetime hearings.
Trump made a post on his social media platform hours before the committee’s third hearing on Thursday, claiming that the lack of airtime was unfair to him.
“The Fake News Networks are perpetuating lies, falsehoods, and Russia, Russia, Russia type disinformation (same sick people, here we go again!) by allowing the low rated but nevertheless one sided and slanderous Unselect Committee hearings to go endlessly and aimlessly on (and on and on!),” Trump wrote.
“It is a one sided, highly partisan Witch Hunt, the likes of which has never been seen in Congress before. Therefore, I am hereby demanding EQUAL TIME to spell out the massive Voter Fraud & Dem Security Breach!” Trump added, once again parroting his own groundless claims of voter fraud.
The former president then followed up with another post, this time in all caps, reading: “I DEMAND EQUAL TIME!!!”
This week, Trump released a 12-page statement bashing the January 6 investigation. In that statement, he claimed without substantiation that the January 6 panel investigating the riot was out to stop him from running for president again in 2024.
Many US television networks have been airing the January 6 hearings during primetime slots. The committee held the third of its six public hearings on Thursday afternoon, outlining how the Trump camp pressured former Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the election.
Read the original article on Business Insider
How Americans feel about the Jan. 6 hearings so far
Harris recalled watching every minute of the Watergate hearings in 1973, a TV event that riveted the nation and persuaded many of Richard M. Nixon’s supporters that their president was indeed a crook. But Americans were more open to facts then, she said: “Every American knew by the end that Nixon was guilty. But now it’s different. Because Trump supporters — no matter what you do, no matter what you say, they don’t believe.”
In snippy debates and in silent tension, with smidgens of hope and wheelbarrows of doubt, Americans processed the first hearings before the congressional committee investigating last year’s attack on the U.S. Capitol. Millions watched, looking for evidence that President Donald Trump incited the Jan. 6, 2021, riot, because they want the ex-president held to account. They watched in hopes that Trump supporters might see the folly of their hero’s claims about a rigged election.
But millions more did not watch — because they’ve had it up to here with criticism of a president they admired, or because they’re overdosed on politics, or too busy working to make it through a time of crazy gas prices and expensive everything.
On the line between Tulsa and Orlando, the siblings concluded that despite the barrage of testimony showing how the people around Trump tried to persuade him that he had lost the 2020 election, “there’s just probably no hope in persuading” his supporters that Trump’s claim of a rigged election was utterly bogus, said Petersen, 73, a retired corporate human resources officer.
He concluded from the first hearings that Trump knew that “what he is telling people is false and his intent in telling those lies is to remain in power, or to collect millions.” But Petersen harbors little hope that Trump voters will accept that: “They may take that viewpoint to the grave or, if they’re young enough, they may go 20 or 30 years to come off of that position even slightly.”
His sister, 79 and once a delegate to a Republican National Convention, didn’t share her brother’s admiration for the committee’s chairman, Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.). “Seems like he’s reaching a conclusion before hearing anything,” she said. But she found the Republican vice chairwoman, Rep. Liz Cheney (Wyo.), persuasive, and the siblings agreed on that.
Across the country, those who watched were often outraged by the extent of the scheming that led to the attack. In the Chicago suburb of Highland Park, Christina Merlo tuned in to show her sons, ages 13 and 16, why it’s vital to take action to protect democracy. Merlo, 53, said she appreciated the committee’s calm approach and said she learned the answers to questions her children may have about “the rule of law, the peaceful transfer of power, the acceptance of election results.”
Although the first hearing drew an audience of about 19 million, according to the Nielsen rating service, that left the great majority of Americans either relying on video snippets and news accounts or ignoring the proceedings entirely.
In Wheaton, Ill., Dave Seng switched off the first hearing and decided not to tune back in this week, not because he was busy, but because of the stress the hearings caused him.
“I’m conflicted,” said Seng, 54, a software development manager at a financial services company in Chicago. “On one hand, I feel I should watch to gain a firsthand perspective. … There’s almost an aspect of civic responsibility. But on the other hand, I know the testimony will feed into political spin machines, which will spit out all sorts of garbage.”
An independent who once leaned Republican, he left the party two decades ago, deciding he would rather think issues through on his own than depend on a party he believes is driven more by how its candidates can win than by principles about how to govern.
Less politics makes for a fuller life, he concluded. “I can find enough information in a short period of time to know who I am going to vote for. I don’t need to pay attention to it over four years.”
In Tulsa, Susan Phillips is also steering clear. A two-time Trump voter, she decided the committee’s work is “an incredible waste of my time. I think they have foregone conclusions.”
A retired psychologist, Phillips, 77, said the hearings are designed “to distract us from what’s going on in this country — and I refuse to be distracted. What with the high cost of fuel and raging inflation, I believe our current government wouldn’t want us to be concerned about those things, so they’re putting on a show.”
But in the Fort Worth suburb of Benbrook, where Jerry Grantland remains convinced that Trump was a successful president who never intended for his supporters to storm the Capitol, the hearings have nonetheless helped persuade him that Trump needs to stand down.
Grantland, a 74-year-old Vietnam War veteran who suffers from ailments he traces to exposure to Agent Orange, sees Trump as “a good president who meant well. Things just went wrong, but I don’t think that was his intention.”
Still, the hearings’ presentation of Trump’s incendiary rhetoric has persuaded Grantland that the ex-president “certainly has caused a lot of baggage.” It’s time for Republicans — and Trump — to move on and endorse a different candidate, he said: “We old guys just need to give it up.”
Even if the hearings do change some Trump voters’ minds, they cannot save the country from a treacherous, even violent, reckoning, said Kathleen Betsko Yale, a retired actress and playwright in Buffalo.
Yale has been glued to the hearings. As an immigrant who grew up in Coventry, England, during World War II, she finds too many echoes of the rise of authoritarianism in Europe.
“I try to be hopeful,” she said, “but I think we’ve reached a tipping point and we’re going to have to go through some dark times before we come to our senses. Fascism is always about turning people against each other, and that’s what we see in the hearings.”
Yale expects that her great-grandchildren will emerge from a time of American darkness, “but at 83, I doubt I will see that. What we need is reconciliation, but I have people in my own family who are on the other side and we can’t talk about it. We try to get along without going there.”
That sense of despair, that feeling that only those who already viewed Trump as a threat to democracy are gaining wisdom from the hearings, seemed palpable in many places.
“It’s just us people who hate his guts who are watching this,” said Shirley Welch, a 78-year-old grandmother of three in Fort Worth. “I still think this is a good thing. But it won’t change any minds.”
Watching with her 6-year-old Siamese cat, Sophie, perched on an ottoman in front of her, Welch winced as she saw video of rampaging protesters throwing a female Capitol Police officer to the ground. Welch laughed as she heard Trump praising the rioters.
“I’m hoping they can put him in jail, or at least get it where he can’t run again,” she said.
A retired hospital lab technician who used to lean Republican — until Sen. John McCain picked then-Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate in 2008 — Welch got a boost from the hearings, especially from the two Republicans on the committee, whom she saw as putting country over party.
But she has no expectation that the proceedings will help heal the nation’s divisions. She’s not asking for kumbaya: “I just want our political people to be normal, law-abiding people.”
Some conservatives have, however, found a new perspective from the Republican witnesses who have testified that Trump’s inner circle knew he lost the election.
Mike Patterson, 49, who owns a graphics design business in Weatherford, Tex., west of Fort Worth, calls himself a staunch conservative and said that the hearings have been “very enlightening,” persuading him that the 2020 election was “probably not” rigged.
The committee successfully debunked the idea that ballot boxes in Georgia had been planted to swing that state’s votes to Joe Biden, Patterson said. He now believes Trump was wrong to keep hammering away with the false claim that he won the election.
“His pride kept him from accepting he had lost,” Patterson said.
Consensus in short supply
That kind of pivot was perhaps what Jeanne Dufort was hoping to witness at the watch party she organized last week in Madison, Ga., 60 miles east of Atlanta. Dufort, 66, a real estate agent who is active in the local Democratic Party, had envisioned a bipartisan crowd coming together to consider the evidence with open minds.
But the 14 people who gathered at the Episcopal Church of the Advent were mostly — well, probably all — Democrats. Like Dufort, they saw the committee “doing a good job of laying the story out,” as she put it. “They’re telling the story from the inside out, saying this is what the president did. This is what he knew. These are the choices he made.”
Five blocks away, at Madison Town Park, Ron Collins spent the first evening of the hearings watching a juggling show with his niece and her son. Collins shared the worries that the people at the Church of the Advent had about the country’s future, but there was no way he was going to watch the proceedings from the church or anywhere else.
“I have no interest in that show,” said Collins, 74. “I wish they would focus on the things this country is dealing with.”
He works for a distribution company now but will soon switch to a post as a hotel manager so he won’t have to drive so much, a job requirement killing his bank account.
“My last three months, I’m averaging $364 a month on gas, going to call on customers,” Collins said.
Almost a half-century ago, Collins watched the Watergate hearings and considered them a valuable lesson in civics, but he’s disinclined to watch this time.
“What’s the difference now?” he asked. “We’ve had two years of riots. We’ve had people that are trying to tear down or burn down police stations. Most of these things were more violent than what happened on January 6. I think the American people are tired of all this. I don’t think anybody realistically believed democracy was threatened that day. … When you see someone in a headdress and a loincloth, it’s hard to take them seriously.”
Collins voted for Trump twice but doesn’t believe the 2020 election was rigged and doesn’t consider himself “a big Trump supporter guy. You have to put aside Trump’s personal behavior and look at what he was able to accomplish.”
That’s the kind of conversation Kathy Mortensen can’t bring herself to have anymore. She considers herself a “middle-of-the-road, common-sense kind of person,” someone who was once a Republican and once a Democrat but ended up alienated from both parties.
Mortensen, a retired teacher in Fort Mohave, Ariz., has been glued to the hearings, hoping to find something to trust. She’s been impressed by “the factual job, reporting without bias. It’s not being sensationalized, and I appreciate that.”
Having grown up during the Nixon years, Mortensen said: “I know that these things should not be brushed aside. They need to be made public.” She wrote a letter to Cheney, thanking the conservative lawmaker for breaking ranks with many in her party to pursue the truth.
But she holds little hope that the hearings will bring Americans closer to consensus. “I struggle to be around ardent Trump supporters,” she said. “I can be with my friends until politics come up, and then I have to change the topic or leave the conversation. I know that’s not how it should be.”
‘That’s the thing about Trump’
Watching the hearings has persuaded some Trump supporters that the ex-president’s fixation on overturning his loss is based not so much on genuine doubts as on his inability to accept his legitimate defeat.
Monday’s evidence, especially former attorney general William P. Barr’s account of how he checked out the fraud allegations and informed Trump that there was nothing to them, helped Jill and Jim Allen of Sugar Hill, Ga., understand that Trump simply rejected the facts.
The hearings have put to rest Jill’s doubts about the 2020 vote, said the retired social studies teacher, who previously worked at the Westminster Schools, a prestigious private school in Atlanta’s wealthy Buckhead community. “I never thought the election was stolen,” she said. “Today confirmed that.”
Her husband, a semiretired financial planner and lifelong Republican, concluded after Monday’s testimony that “there was a lot of denial by Trump. His staff advised him, but he just wasn’t listening to them.”
“That’s the thing about Trump,” said Jill, who is 72 and has voted for every Republican presidential candidate since Nixon. “You can’t tell him anything, especially if it’s something he doesn’t want to hear.”
Yet the Allens, both two-time Trump voters, would vote for him again. And they rejected the idea that Trump’s false election claims led to the Jan. 6 attack.
“I think it was just a bunch of hotheads, a bunch of firebrands,” Jill said. “I would never think Trump would encourage any kind of violence, ever.”
She wishes Trump would drop the election fraud issue, follow Al Gore’s example and accept the voters’ decision, as the Democratic candidate did after the lengthy legal battle over the 2000 presidential election.
Neither Jim nor Jill wants Trump to run again, but Jill suspects he will.
“He’s not a quitter,” she said. “I would vote for him, but I would rather vote for someone else, and [the hearings] solidified that thought. I don’t like when people are unreasonable.”
Still, the idea of another four years of Trump in the White House gives her a certain comfort, she said: “I slept well when he was president.”
Fisher reported from Washington; Shavin from Madison, Ga.; Douglas from Fort Worth; and Canfield from Tulsa. Mark Guarino in Chicago and Jack Wright in New York contributed to this report.
Opinion | Decoding Liz Cheney’s big hint about the Jan. 6 hearings, John Eastman, and Donald Trump
The suggestion, of course, is that Eastman’s activities were criminal. And the release of that video, which largely featured Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) previewing Thursday’s hearing as committee vice chair, had its desired effect: It built media anticipation for a new set of revelations.
But to really grasp the importance of this, focus on a different quote — one from Cheney. In the video, Cheney reminded us the committee has convincingly demonstrated that Trump was extensively informed he’d lost. Cheney then said Thursday’s hearing will focus on Trump’s relentless pressure on Pence to subvert the electoral count in Congress.
“President Trump had no factual basis for what he was doing, and he had been told it was illegal,” Cheney continued. Despite this, she added, Trump “plotted” with Eastman and others to overturn the election on Jan. 6, 2021.
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A crucial hint there is that Trump had been told this was illegal. This suggests the committee might furnish new evidence that Trump had been warned that such pressure — which constituted an effort to push Pence into violating his official duty — could violate the law.
A source close to Cheney tells me the committee is very likely to present such evidence. When Cheney says such things, the source says, it’s “based on information the committee knows.”
Trump’s pressure on Pence to abuse his role as president of the Senate by delaying the election’s conclusion is the key that unlocks this whole scandal. Eastman concocted a bogus legal justification for Pence to secure this delay, which would allow states to revisit the voting, find it fraudulent and certify sham electors for Trump, overturning his loss.
But also critical is that Trump was told this would be illegal on Pence’s part. What’s more, Trump appears to have been told his pressure on Pence to do that might also be illegal.
What do we know about this part of the story? We know Pence’s counsel drafted a memo forcefully informing Trump that if Pence carried out his scheme, he’d be in violation of the Electoral Count Act of 1887, which governs how Congress counts presidential electors.
Which means Trump was told he was pressing Pence to violate his official duty and to break the law. Yet Trump kept doing so, including on Jan. 6, when he hammered Pence again in a phone call and then whipped up the mob to put still more pressure on Pence to carry out the dirty deed.
On whether Trump was told his act of bringing that pressure might also be illegal, recall that the select committee has obtained relevant texts between Fox News’s Sean Hannity and Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows. In them, Hannity suggested he had inside knowledge of White House conversations about whether Trump’s pressure on Pence was legal.
Hannity even seemed to suggest the whole White House counsel’s office might quit over this. So does the committee have more evidence that Trump or his top advisers were informed pressuring Pence violated the law?
Cheney sure seemed to hint as much. So what laws might be implicated here?
A federal judge recently declared that Trump’s pressure on Pence might have violated two laws. One prohibits obstruction of an official proceeding (the count of electors). The other bars conspiracy to defraud the United States (Trump and Eastman may have conspired to disrupt that count).
If Trump had been told pressuring Pence was illegal, it could buttress the case that Trump violated either of these statutes. It could constitute more evidence that Trump did one or both those things corruptly, says Randall Eliason, a white collar crime specialist.
“Conspiracy to defraud the U.S. and conspiracy to obstruct a congressional proceeding require the government to prove corrupt or wrongful intent,” Eliason told me. “This is one more piece.”
In other words, if Trump were informed pressuring Pence had put him on shaky legal ground, yet he continued doing so anyway, it could disarm the argument that Trump simply believed he’d won the election and that he was merely exercising his legal options in response.
Eliason cautioned that this would represent one piece of a broader effort to prove Trump’s corrupt intent throughout. Other pieces include strong evidence that Trump knew he’d lost yet tried to overturn the results anyway, and that Trump pressured the Justice Department to manufacture fake evidence of widespread voter fraud, to create a pretext for the whole scheme.
In this narrative, Eliason said, Trump pressuring Pence would constitute “one of a number of incidents that tend to show his state of mind.”
We still don’t know if Trump or his co-conspirators will ever face a criminal investigation relating to Jan. 6. But Cheney just dropped a big hint about the case the committee will make against both Eastman and Trump. “Get a great effing criminal defense lawyer,” indeed.