Kmgw9v Loc: Miami, Florida

"In arguably the most important congressional hearing since Watergate, the House Jan. 6 select committee conducted its first prime-time proceedings on Thursday into defeated former president Donald Trump’s attempt to overthrow the 2020 election results. It was gripping, shocking and, at times, frightening.

Here are a few of the key takeaways of the committee’s gob-smacking account of the worst betrayal ever by an American president:

1. The seriousness of the insurrection
Committee Chairman Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.) in his opening remarks took time to make a compelling contrast of Trump to Abraham Lincoln, who in the middle of the Civil War was willing to turn over the reins of power if he lost reelection. As Thompson explained, the oath that officeholders must take — to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic” — was a response to the Civil War.

Meanwhile, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) quoted from the opinion of a federal judge warning that if the coup plotters were not investigated and held responsible, an attack on U.S. democracy would happen again. The message was profound and clear: We came frightfully close to losing our democracy — and will again unless we hold Trump accountable.

2. The whole plot
The challenge for the committee is to tell a coherent story of the entire plot and to dispel the myth that the coup attempt was only about the Capitol assault. The committee has so far succeeded. Its initial telling of the far-flung plot — peppered with new, damning tidbits of Trump’s willful pursuit of power — was breathtaking.
Committee members certainly provided a taste of the magnitude of the plot. Jan. 6 was the “culmination of a coup attempt,” said Thompson. Cheney promised to outline Trump’s seven-part plan to overthrow the election. Her calm, methodical presentation previewed the evidence of Trump’s efforts to pressure state officials, concoct phony electors and induce the Justice Department to assist in overturning the election.

Small anecdotes added to the persuasiveness of the account. Cheney described a late-night meeting of former national security adviser Michael Flynn and Trump attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell to cook up crazy schemes to “rerun the election.” That was the predicate for Trump’s infamous tweet summoning supporters to come to D.C. on Jan. 6. (“Be there, will be wild,” he said.) The clear implication was that Trump was calling the mob to help facilitate the loony plans.

Finally, the committee offered a sense of how Trump’s public words spurred the mob. His “stand back and stand by” comment to the Proud Boys goosed membership in the far-right organization.

3.The evidence of Trump’s ‘corrupt’ intent
If Trump is ever to be held criminally accountable for the coup attempt, prosecutors will have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he knew what he was doing was wrong and unjustified. Here, the committee demonstrated there may be ample evidence of that.

Trump was repeatedly told his claims of voter fraud were bogus. New video of former attorney general William P. Barr’s testimony to the committee showed that he told Trump his fraud claims were “bulls--t” and “complete nonsense.” In addition, a sample of testimony from other Trump officials showed claims of fraud were repeatedly debunked and ridiculed. Justice Department officials and the White House counsel threatened to quit if Trump persisted in deploying the lie to retain power. Officials told Trump it was illegal to pressure former vice president Mike Pence to throw the election to him.

In the words of former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows regarding voter fraud, “There is no there, there.” Trump persisted anyway. The array of witnesses who will attest to Trump’s willful disregard of all his aides’ admonition is powerful evidence, previously unknown, that he knew he had no legitimate claim to the presidency.
Other anecdotes solidified the image of a president fixated on remaining in power. Trump reportedly declared of calls to hang Pence: “Maybe our supporters have the right idea. Mike Pence deserves it.” Cheney’s retelling was bone-chilling — an indication of a dangerous character bent on overthrowing an election.

And in failing to lift a finger to stop the mob (he “placed no call to any element of the United States government to instruct the Capitol be defended,” Cheney said), Trump’s corrupt intent was laid bare. The conclusion is obvious: He wanted the violence to play out because he thought it might stop the transfer of power. By contrast, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark A. Milley testified that Pence urged him to get the National Guard down to the Capitol.

4.The shocking violence on Jan. 6
To this day, Republicans have downplayed or dismissed the extent of the violence on Jan. 6. The committee showed beyond a reasonable doubt that this was not “legitimate political discourse,” as the Republican National Committee described it.
Seeing new video, and hearing audio of desperate police describing the attack, was nothing short of terrifying. The cruelty and lawlessness of the mob are indisputable. Trump’s words insisting that “love was in the air” was a powerful reminder of his capacity to lie.

Testimony from Capitol Police Officer Caroline Edwards, who was abused and injured on that day, made clear that no reasonable person could doubt the crowd’s viciousness and anger. Filmmaker Nick Quested testified that the mob appeared well organized. This was no spontaneous uprising.

5. The cooperation of so many Republicans
Americans must understand that evidence against Trump comes from people who worked for him right up to the bitter end. These lifelong Republicans’ accounts are required to tell the story, and their presence at the hearings via video should dispel the notion that this was all cooked up by Democrats. If the MAGA crowd has a beef with the facts, they will need to take it up with Republican witnesses including Barr, former White House adviser Ivanka Trump, Trump campaign adviser Jason Miller and others.

"It was remarkably powerful to hear people who spun and even lied on behalf of Trump soberly tell the truth. Their testimony attesting to the bogus fraud claims, and to the consensus within the White House that Trump’s actions were illegal, was the most effective rebuke imaginable to the “big lie".

Americans have become so accustomed to combative hearings hijacked by MAGA zealots that the committee’s coherent and dignified proceeding serves as a reminder that responsible, sane governance is possible. And Cheney cemented her role as an honorable patriot, a living rebuke to her spineless and deceitful fellow Republicans. She and the entire committee’s diligence help restore our faith in democracy."

Jennifer Rubin

travelwp Loc: New Jersey

As some on the left said: “We came frightfully close to losing our democracy”.

Suggesting that if a fence were put around the building, that the unruly mob inside could run the country? How ridiculous!

Over one and a half years ago this riot took place and it’s still on the ‘front page’ of all the news services. Where is the news on the 150 days of riots in Portland where buildings were burned, businesses were ruined and people were killed………no where to be found.

WHY?: The goal of the Jan 6 hearings are not about our democracy, the goal of the Jan 6 hearings is: TO KEEP SHEDDING NEGATIVE LIGHT ON TRUMP SO HE WILL NEVER RUN AGAIN.

The left fears Trump because he GETS STUFF DONE, and they will stretch negativity of the Jan 6 event out until election time, if they need to


.

SteveS Loc: The US is my home.

Um, Trump was acquitted of January 6th. But leave it to the loonies that believe all these dog and pony shows will change that.

travelwp Loc: New Jersey

That's all they've got, keep tuned, the dog and pony show will go on for YEARS.

slocumeddie Loc: Inside your head, again

I disagree.......

Get ready.....it's still coming.....!!!

BlackRipleyDog

The January 6 Primetime Hearing Was an EMBARRASSING FLOP!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1LTBhKzxwU

Fotoartist Loc: Detroit, Michigan

A couple of points.

Rubin writes, "Testimony from Capitol Police Officer Caroline Edwards, who was abused and injured on that day, made clear that no reasonable person could doubt the crowd’s viciousness and anger. Filmmaker Nick Quested testified that the mob appeared well organized. This was no spontaneous uprising."

My comment. Capitol Police Officer Caroline Edwards is a cop! She was in a scuffle, had a fall, and bumped her head. What did she think when she received riot training as a cop that crowd control would be tea time? What about unarmed Ashli Babbit who was murdered by a Capitol cop? What about her?

Filmmaker Nick Quested testified that he got to the Capitol early in the morning and the Proud Boys or Oath Keepers and others were already there on the steps past the bike stands. And there was only one lone cop there guarding the Capitol. This was well before Pres. Trump gave his speech so how could that speech have incited them?

Drbobcameraguy Loc: Eaton Ohio

The record of the capital police states that they wanted the extra gaurd troops offered by Trump 2 days before the event. The FBI also told the capital police and pelosi that there could be trouble and to use the help from the guard troops. Pelosi denies this and refused to use the help offered. These are facts on the and in the record of the capital police. So let's have pelosi answer some questions. Oh that's right she is above the law and cannot be subpoenad. Lmao

travelwp Loc: New Jersey

Yes this whole Jan 6th event is only to shed negative light on Trump. The left is afraid of Trump.

Kmgw9v Loc: Miami, Florida

"January 6th was a disgrace.

American citizens attacked their own government. They used terrorism to try to stop a specific piece of democratic business they did not like.

Fellow Americans beat and bloodied our own police. They stormed the Senate floor. They tried to hunt down the Speaker of the House. They built a gallows and chanted about murdering the vice president.

They did this because they had been fed wild falsehoods by the most powerful man on Earth – because he was angry he'd lost an election.

Former President Trump's actions preceding the riot were a disgraceful dereliction of duty.

The House accused the former president of, quote, "incitement." That is a specific term from the criminal law.

Let me put that to the side for one moment and reiterate something I said weeks ago: There is no question that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of that day.

The people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their president.

And their having that belief was a foreseeable consequence of the growing crescendo of false statements, conspiracy theories, and reckless hyperbole which the defeated president kept shouting into the largest megaphone on planet Earth.


The issue is not only the president's intemperate language on January 6th.

It is not just his endorsement of remarks in which an associate urged "trial by combat."

It was also the entire manufactured atmosphere of looming catastrophe; the increasingly wild myths about a reverse landslide election that was being stolen in some secret coup by our now-president.

I defended the president's right to bring any complaints to our legal system. The legal system spoke. The Electoral College spoke. As I stood up and said clearly at the time, the election was settled.

But that reality just opened a new chapter of even wilder and more unfounded claims.

The leader of the free world cannot spend weeks thundering that shadowy forces are stealing our country and then feign surprise when people believe him and do reckless things.

Sadly, many politicians sometimes make overheated comments or use metaphors that unhinged listeners might take literally.

This was different.

This was an intensifying crescendo of conspiracy theories, orchestrated by an outgoing president who seemed determined to either overturn the voters' decision or else torch our institutions on the way out.

The unconscionable behavior did not end when the violence began.

Whatever our ex-president claims he thought might happen that day, whatever reaction he says he meant to produce, by that afternoon, he was watching the same live television as the rest of the world.

A mob was assaulting the Capitol in his name. These criminals were carrying his banners, hanging his flags, and screaming their loyalty to him.

It was obvious that only President Trump could end this.

Former aides publicly begged him to do so. Loyal allies frantically called the administration.


But the president did not act swiftly. He did not do his job. He didn't take steps so federal law could be faithfully executed, and order restored.

Instead, according to public reports, he watched television happily as the chaos unfolded. He kept pressing his scheme to overturn the election!

Even after it was clear to any reasonable observer that Vice President Pence was in danger, even as the mob carrying Trump banners was beating cops and breaching perimeters, the president sent a further tweet attacking his vice president.

Predictably and foreseeably under the circumstances, members of the mob seemed to interpret this as further inspiration to lawlessness and violence.

Later, even when the president did halfheartedly begin calling for peace, he did not call right away for the riot to end. He did not tell the mob to depart until even later.

And even then, with police officers bleeding and broken glass covering Capitol floors, he kept repeating election lies and praising the criminals.

In recent weeks, our ex-president's associates have tried to use the 74 million Americans who voted to re-elect him as a kind of human shield against criticism.

Anyone who decries his awful behavior is accused of insulting millions of voters.

That is an absurd deflection.

Seventy-four million Americans did not invade the Capitol. Several hundred rioters did.

And 74 million Americans did not engineer the campaign of disinformation and rage that provoked it.

One person did.

I have made my view of this episode very plain.

But our system of government gave the Senate a specific task. The Constitution gives us a particular role.

This body is not invited to act as the nation's overarching moral tribunal.


We are not free to work backward from whether the accused party might personally deserve some kind of punishment.

Justice Joseph Story was our nation's first great constitutional scholar. As he explained nearly 200 years ago, the process of impeachment and conviction is a narrow tool for a narrow purpose..

If President Trump were still in office, I would have carefully considered whether the House managers proved their specific charge.

By the strict criminal standard, the president's speech probably was not incitement.

However, in the context of impeachment, the Senate might have decided this was acceptable shorthand for the reckless actions that preceded the riot.

But in this case, that question is moot. Because former President Trump is constitutionally not eligible for conviction.

There is no doubt this is a very close question. Donald Trump was the president when the House voted, though not when the House chose to deliver the papers.

Brilliant scholars argue both sides of the jurisdictional question. The text is legitimately ambiguous. I respect my colleagues who have reached either conclusion.

But after intense reflection, I believe the best constitutional reading shows that Article II, Section 4 exhausts the set of persons who can legitimately be impeached, tried, or convicted. The president, vice president and civil officers.

We have no power to convict and disqualify a former officeholder who is now a private citizen.


"The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors."


Now, everyone basically agrees that the second half of that sentence exhausts the legitimate grounds for conviction.

The debates around the Constitution's framing make that clear. Congress cannot convict for reasons besides those.

It therefore follows that the list of persons in that same sentence is also exhaustive. There is no reason why one list would be exhaustive but the other would not.

Article II, Section 4 must limit both why impeachment and conviction can occur – and to whom.

If this provision does not limit the impeachment and conviction powers, then it has no limits at all.

The House's "sole power of Impeachment" and the Senate's "sole Power to try all Impeachments" would create an unlimited circular logic, empowering Congress to ban any private citizen from federal office.

This is an incredible claim. But it is the argument the House managers seemed to make. One manager said the House and Senate have "absolute, unqualified ... jurisdictional power."

That was very honest. Because there is no limiting principle in the constitutional text that would empower the Senate to convict former officers that would not also let them convict and disqualify any private citizen.

An absurd end result to which no one subscribes.

Article II, Section 4 must have force. It tells us the president, vice president and civil officers may be impeached and convicted. Donald Trump is no longer the president.

Likewise, the provision states that officers subject to impeachment and conviction "shall be removed from Office" if convicted.


"Shall."

As Justice Story explained, "the Senate, [upon] conviction, [is] bound, in all cases, to enter a judgment of removal from office." Removal is mandatory upon conviction.

Clearly, he explained, that mandatory sentence cannot be applied to somebody who has left office.

The entire process revolves around removal. If removal becomes impossible, conviction becomes insensible.

In one light, it certainly does seem counterintuitive that an officeholder can elude Senate conviction by resignation or expiration of term.

But this just underscores that impeachment was never meant to be the final forum for American justice.

Impeachment, conviction, and removal are a specific intra-governmental safety valve. It is not the criminal justice system, where individual accountability is the paramount goal.

Indeed, Justice Story specifically reminded that while former officials were not eligible for impeachment or conviction, they were – and this is extremely important – "still liable to be tried and punished in the ordinary tribunals of justice."

Put anther way, in the language of today: President Trump is still liable for everything he did while he was in office, as an ordinary citizen, unless the statute of limitations has run, still liable for everything he did while in office, didn't get away with anything yet – yet.

We have a criminal justice system in this country. We have civil litigation. And former presidents are not immune from being held accountable by either one.

I believe the Senate was right not to grab power the Constitution does not give us.

And the Senate was right not to entertain some light-speed sham process to try to outrun the loss of jurisdiction.


It took both sides more than a week just to produce their pre-trial briefs. Speaker Pelosi's own scheduling decisions conceded what President Biden publicly confirmed: A Senate verdict before Inauguration Day was never possible.

This has been a dispiriting time. But the Senate has done our duty. The framers' firewall held up again.

On January 6th, we returned to our posts and certified the election, uncowed.

And since then, we resisted the clamor to defy our own constitutional guardrails in hot pursuit of a particular outcome.

We refused to continue a cycle of recklessness by straining our own constitutional boundaries in response.

The Senate's decision does not condone anything that happened on or before that terrible day.

It simply shows that Senators did what the former president failed to do:

We put our constitutional duty first."

Mitch McConnell

Fotoartist Loc: Detroit, Michigan

Who's being fed wild falsehoods? You are by the media.

Do you honestly believe that Biden was able to get 10 million more votes campaigning from his basement than Obama was ever able to achieve? And it's not that Trump was a poor opponent. Trump led and was responsible for the most robust economy in history and also got more votes than Obama.

Who in this country honestly believes that Biden an utter disgrace as president, a known liar, mentally challenged, totally unaccomplished and who is reviled by two-thirds of the country could ever have legitimately won the most votes for president in US history without the voting irregularities and cheating?

Any logical person can see there had to be fraud. It's obvious the election was stolen from Trump. Who wouldn't protest or revolt?

Kmgw9v Loc: Miami, Florida

My post was a speech given by Mitch to the Senate on February 14, 2021 relative to his conclusions about the insurrection on January 6th, and his reasons for not voting to impeach. Basically he opined that the Constitution did not provide for the impeachment of a former President. That is what the thread is about.

Kmgw9v Loc: Miami, Florida

William Barr resigned his office of Attorney General on December 23, 2020 after telling Trump that there was no election fraud. He wanted no further association with Trump's lies about the election. Barr said that Trump's allegations about election fraud were "bullshit".
Ivanna was taped saying that she believed Barr with regard to the allegations of election fraud.

slocumeddie Loc: Inside your head, again

Not relevant(except to keep your hatred in high gear.......)

Kmgw9v Loc: Miami, Florida

Trump’s Attorney General says that the allegations of voter fraud are “bullshit”, resigns his position to disassociate himself from the con that Trump has perpetuated against this country. One might think Barr was wrong, but don’t say “not relevant”.
That is just blind, and nonsensical. What is wrong with you people who are so loyal to a man that is so clearly dangerous?