So much from today, from inside the White House. From memory and ordered for timeline as best I can:
Meadows and Giuliani knew there was going to be violence at least 3 days before 1/6
Meadows called in to Giuliani and Stone and the Willard War Room on 1/5
Trump really, really, really wanted to go to the Capitol with the rioters on 1/6. He was told by the SS that they didn’t have the assets (this may be the first recorded example of Trump’s telling matching up with reality)
Cipollone told Meadows that Trump couldn’t go to the Capitol because they would be guilty of “every crime”
Trump not only wanted to go to the Capitol, he wanted to go into the Capitol; to enter the House chamber like Oliver fucking Cromwell
As the crowd gathered for the Elipse rally, law enforcement spotted multiple men in attendance carrying AR-15s and other small arms
Trump was told about the heavily armed men in attendance, but was angry that the crowd was being restricted
Trump wanted the magnetometers taken down to allow “everyone” to get onto the rally site; “They’re not here to hurt me” - direct quote
Cipollone and others fought to keep the inflammatory “fight” language out of Trump’s speech, but he said it anyway
After his speech, he lost his shit when he was told that he couldn’t go to the Capitol
Trump tried to grab the wheel of the Beast and, when his SS head intervened, Trump grabbed him by the throat
Back at the White House, Trump refused to call off the rioters
There were three camps of advisors, those on board with Trump, those trying to stay neutral and those wanting Trump to do something. Meadows was fully on Team Trump; Ivanka was on Team Do Something
Trump was confirmed to have said that he was ok with Mike Pence being hanged
The tweet calling Pence a coward - that further inflamed the mob and caused a surge into the Capitol building - was sent after Trump was aware of the “Hang Mike Pence” chants
The talk of using the 25th amendment to get him out of office was real
Meadows and Giuliani both petitioned for a pardon
The stuff around the armed rioters, and that Trump wanted to let them all in because it wasn’t him they were after seems to me to be the biggest smoking gun here.
Still, so much other stuff too. Even more than above that was not part of the 1/6 main through line. Trump throwing food and flipping tables on the regular. Flynn pleading “FIF!” when asked if he believed in the peaceful transfer of power, is particularly infuriating.
At the end, Cheney sent a nuke across the bows of Trumpets about witness tampering. She showed anonymized messages that had been sent to witnesses trying to influence their testimony. She was letting them know that they know who they are and what they’re doing, and that what they’re doing is a crime.
Halfway through her testimony, Trump confirmed that Hutchinson was being truthful by posting on Truth Social that he hardly knew her and that she is “bad news”.
Knowing how shady many of these people are, and knowing that they stretch the legal/illegal boundary towards the illegal side, I’m somewhat surprised that they were requesting pardons prior to the investigation. Leads me to assume that the plan behind the scenes was probably worse than we’ve been led to believe so far, so blatantly treasonous that even Flynn, Stone and Rudy knew they couldn’t spin it as some improbable confluence of actors working separately.
One surreal scene that jumped out at me was Cipollone turning to a 24-year-old and saying “Cassidy, whatever happens, don’t let the President go to the Capitol!”
I’m about 80% serious when I say that if the Democrats solved all of the country’s existential problems tomorrow, and they could, fairly easily, they would then be totally lost because they’d have no idea what to fundraise off of.
In the last few weeks, in addition to taking down 60 years of constitutional jurisprudence regarding the right to privacy in order to eliminate the right for a woman to decide the fate of her own body, they’ve eliminated the establishment clause, which is literally the first fucking right expressly listed in the Bill of Rights, and substantially weakened the 4th, 5th, 7th and 9th amendments. They are all in peril.
ETA: And tomorrow good luck to the whatever remains of the administrative state after they get done demolishing the EPA.
Meadows really, really, really wanted to attend the War Room meeting at the Willard Hotel. It was only after he was convinced of how disastrous his attendance would be that he agreed to phone in. He was fully on board.
While Jordan and McCarthy were sending Meadows desperate messages to get Trump to call off his dogs, and he was telling them his was on it, he was doing absolutely nothing to save them. They should be a little pissed at Meadows this morning.
Also, on the three camps thing, the middle camp (IIRC) came up with the idea simply to blame ANTIFA. So that’s where that ridiculous lie was born.
The testimony I heard was that he jumped up from the back seat and and reached through the opening for the stirring wheel. The agent grabbed his arm to stop him and then Trump turned on him and reached for his throat. However the main reason, I believe it’s true is becasue Trump says it is not.
The point here is that Trump wasn’t in The Beast, where it would’ve been hard for him to try to grab the wheel. He was in a Secret Service Suburban, where he would’ve been alone in the back seat with the driver and his bodyguard in the front seats. In that circumstance, it’s very easy for him to go for the wheel and try and fend off the bodyguard.
It was noted on the news yesterday that the Suburban came to an abrupt halt shortly after pulling away from the rally stage, possibly indicating that the driver was somehow distracted…
Trump wanted the magnetometers taken down, because attendees weren’t going through them. That wasn’t because the lines were long, it was because people were having their weapons confiscated when passing through the checkpoints. They chose to stay outside the secure area to keep their weapons on them.
The list of confiscated items included:
Guns - rifles and pistols
Knives
Batons
Bear Spray
Brass Knuckles
Body Armor
Gas Masks
Trump knew that his crowd was heavily armed, but he ordered the “mags” taken down because he wanted the optics of a big crowd at the rally stage. He said they could go down to the Capitol from there.
The food-flinging and wheel-grabbing tantrums are lascivious details that are getting a lot of attention. But we all knew that he was a pathetic, whiny, man-baby, so this is fun to hear but not really relevant.
The main story should be that Trump welcomed an armed crowd to his rally, riled them up, put a target on the VP’s back and sent them to the Capitol with instructions to “fight for Trump.” Hutchinson put Trump directly in charge of that mouth-breathing army - and that is absolutely new.
I think this falls under the “dual sovereignty” doctrine, where the same act can constitute multiple prosecutable offenses in different jurisdictions. This is not a new principle, and it’s not “extra-judicial”. Whether this leads to one state being able to prosecute someone for committing a legal act in another is a much greater stretch. Not that they won’t try, and quite possibly succeed, but I wouldn’t necessarily say this is what’s happening here.
We have more than our share of lawyers who can correct me, though.
Hey, Rudy, you and all of the other brownshirts have been invited repeatedly to present your version of events to the committee. As usual, when the possibility of perjury arises, you guys run away for the safety of a perjury-free megaphone.
