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      Bannon trial set for closing arguments after defense doesn’t call witnesses

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      Bannon trial set for closing arguments after defense doesn’t call witnessesFederal prosectors to make final pitch to convict Trump’s ex-adviser on charges of contempt of Congress for defying subpoena Federal prosecutors are due to make their final pitch to jurors on Friday to convict Steve Bannon, Donald Trump’s former presidential adviser, on charges of contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena by the committee investigating last year’s attack on the US Capitol by supporters of the-then president as they sought to overturn his election defeat by Joe Biden.The prosecution and defense are expected to deliver closing arguments to the 12-member jury in federal court, with deliberations expected to begin afterward.House panel showed Trump conspired to seize the election – but was it illegal?Read moreThe defense rested its case on Thursday without calling any witnesses after the prosecution rested on Wednesday, having called two witnesses over two days.Bannon, 68, has pleaded not guilty to two misdemeanor counts after rebuffing the House of Representative select committee’s subpoena requesting testimony and documents as part of its inquiry into the January 6, 2021, rampage by Trump supporters trying to stop the US Congress officially certifying Democrat Biden’s win over Republican Trump.Bannon had promised in out-of-court bluster to fight his case vigorously and make it the “misdemeanor from hell” for the authorities, but he ultimately made no presentation to the court, as the Daily Beast reported.Prosecutors said they expect their arguments on Friday to last about 30 minutes, plus 15 for rebuttal. The defense said it plans to take roughly the same amount of time to make its arguments.Bannon was barred from arguing that he believed his communications with Trump were subject to a legal doctrine called executive privilege that can keep certain presidential communications confidential. The judge also prohibited Bannon from arguing that he relied on legal advice from an attorney in refusing to comply with the congressional subpoena.Bannon’s primary defense in the trial was that he believed the subpoena’s deadline dates were flexible and subject to negotiation between his attorney and the committee.The main prosecution witness was Kristin Amerling, a senior committee staff member. She testified on Wednesday that Bannon disregarded the subpoena’s two deadlines, sought no extensions and offered an invalid rationale for his defiance – a claim by Trump involving a legal doctrine called executive privilege that can keep certain presidential communications confidential.Bannon has spoken only once in court throughout the trial. He said: “Yes, your honor,” when the judge asked if he agreed not to testify.Outside court on Thursday, Bannon said: “One last thing. I stand with Trump and the constitution.”TopicsSteve BannonJanuary 6 hearingsUS Capitol attackLaw (US)newsReuse this content More

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      The real story of January 6 isn’t what Trump did – it’s what he didn’t | Moira Donegan

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      The real story of January 6 isn’t what Trump did – it’s what he didn’tMoira DoneganWhat was Trump doing in those crucial hours when democracy was on the line, when lives were in danger, when our very constitutional system of government hung in the balance? Absolutely nothing For what was originally supposed to be the final January 6 hearing, the committee was faced with a difficult task. The ninth broadcast was meant to be the culmination of the investigation, with a primetime schedule that would allow the congresspeople to review their findings, repeat their sharpest analyses of Donald Trump’s legal violations and moral derelictions, and make their final case to their two most significant audiences – the American public, on the one hand, and the attorney general, Merrick Garland, on the other – that Trump’s conduct on and before January 6 merits prosecution.But they were also meant to do all of this through revelations of Trump’s own conduct at the White House in the hours while the riot unfolded, conduct that was remarkable not for Trump’s scheming but for his inaction. What was Trump doing during those crucial hours when democracy was on the line, when violence erupted, when lives were in danger and our very constitutional system of government hung in the balance? He did not intervene to stop the insurrection; he did not issue orders or offer help to the military and law enforcement bodies that could have quelled it. Mostly, he just sat on his ass.Trump’s unwillingness to act is itself damning, of course, but it presented a problem for the committee in that it doesn’t make for compelling TV. For all their political gravity, the January 6 committee hearings derive much of their power from spectacle, high production values, and their capacity to engage and entertain. But the negligence, inertia, passivity that Trump showed in those hours – these things have no plot.But the committee’s presentation made swift work of highlighting the stakes of Trump’s refusal to call off the mob. Trump spent the hours of the insurrection mostly holed up in a West Wing dining room, watching Fox News’ coverage of the unfolding violence on a TV mounted to a wall. During these hours, we know that Trump made calls to several Republican senators, asking the likes of Alabama’s Tommy Tuberville to stop the election certification even as he was evacuating the Capitol to escape the mob. We know he received calls from Republican congressmen like minority leader Kevin McCarthy, who begged and screamed at Trump to call off the mob while McCarthy and his aides cowered in hiding. We know he got pleas and lectures from the likes of White House Counsel Pat Cipollone, who in taped testimony seemed livid and contemptuous of his former client, and described himself as one of many advisers imploring Trump to call off the murderous crowds that by then were roaming the Capitol halls in search of Mike Pence.In previous hearings, the committee had been exceedingly generous toward Republicans, casting Pence as a hero for merely declining to facilitate a coup, repeatedly praising the courage of testifying Republicans who have aided Trump’s other crimes and the beauty and integrity of the very institutions whose failures led to January 6 itself. But Thursday’s hearing was a departure from previous installments in that it was willing to hold other Republicans to account, or at least to ridicule their hypocrisy.The committee members made repeated references to the evident terror of Kevin McCarthy, the Republicans’ House leader, who has since made a great effort to bring Trump back into the party fold. They repeatedly played clips of Mitch McConnell, who has said he would support Trump again in 2024, blaming the former president for the attack. They showed an infamous photo of Missouri senator Josh Hawley raising a fist in encouragement to the insurrectionist mob, and then they showed security footage from the Capitol after the rioters invaded. Hawley – the author of Manhood: The Masculine Virtues America Needs – could be seen running frantically away.Placed in the context of all this fear and anger from the men who had spent so long serving him and courting his approval, Trump’s refusal to act transforms. It becomes visible not as a passive failure but as a willful choice. All around him, in his presence and through his phone, people who had been his most dependable sycophants for years were pleading with him to act, explaining that the country, and many human lives, were at stake. Knowing this, it is difficult to see Trump’s refusal to act as any of the things that his malfeasances are normally excused as – incompetence, or childlike narcissism, or low-stakes petulance. His actions come to seem not merely mendacious, but sadistic.Yet Thursday night’s hearing also did a great deal to puncture the mystique of showmanship that has surrounded Trump. In archival clips, we saw outtakes of his Rose Garden video from late on the afternoon of the 6th, the one where, after it was clear that his coup attempt would fail, he finally told the mob that he loved them, and to go home. In the footage, Trump hesitates to speak, repeatedly asking an offscreen aide when he should start. He glowers at his own image on a camera screen; he dispenses with his scripted remarks to deliver a weird, rambling, and barely comprehensible missive to his followers.In outtakes from a speech he taped the next morning, after the crowd had gone home, he stutters over his words and petulantly nitpicks the script. Damningly, he refuses to say that the election is over; the line gets cut from his remarks.But the footage is most striking because of how bumbling and small Trump looks, how starkly his own peevishness and intellectual vacuity contrasts with the moral weight of what he has done. He fumbles his words, unable to speak clearly. He bangs on the podium in frustration; he can’t pronounce “yesterday.” “Yesterday is a hard word for me,” he says. And later, “Is it defied or defiled?” Maybe it’s both.
      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist
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      January 6 panel: shining a light on American democracy’s nose dive

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      January 6 panel: shining a light on American democracy’s nose diveThe gripping hearings have laid out a remarkably complex plot of a simple story: a president’s attempt to blindly retain power After eight gripping hearings, the panel investigating the January 6 attack has completed its first phase of laying out one of the most consequential stories of the modern era: how America’s democracy came to the brink of collapse in the aftermath of the 2020 election.Meet the key players who have defined the January 6 hearingsRead moreIt was a story that at times seemed remarkably complex, involving the vice-president, justice department, advisers inside and outside government, state and federal elected officials, election workers, fringe legal theories and violent extremist groups. But at it’s core it was a very simple story: a president who was determined to stay in power and use whatever power he could to do so.“The January 6 committee has laid out how close we came to full-blown constitutional chaos. Trump and his allies were ready to break through any barrier – both physical and legal – to install him to a second term,” said Nick Penniman, the CEO of Issue One, a good government group. “The collusion and complicity was vast.”Trump sought to overturn the election even as his inner circle warned him that what he was doing was likely unlawful and was fomenting violence. The hearings heard how the president was willing to do whatever it took, even condoning the idea of a violent mob hanging his vice-president.“The disease in the American body politic that the hearings have so ably diagnosed, including the members frequently addressing the threat, was addressed once before when a grand coalition came together in 2020 to defeat Trumpism and defend democracy. It can be addressed again if appropriate steps are taken,” said Norman Eisen, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who served as special counsel to the House judiciary committee during Trump’s first impeachment.Sign up for the Guardian’s Fight to Vote newsletter As much as America is built on the rule of law and its institutions, it was the actions of a handful of people that ensured Joe Biden was seated as the lawfully elected president.There was Mike Pence, who refused to acquiesce to Trump’s pressure campaign to block the lawful counting of electoral votes. There were top officials at the justice department, first, attorney general Bill Barr, who told Trump his claims of fraud were “bullshit”, and later acting attorney general Jeff Rosen and Richard Donoghue, his deputy, who refused an effort to install a Trump loyalist and put the department’s credibility behind specious fraud accusations. There were state officials, Brad Raffensperger in Georgia and Rusty Bowers in Arizona, who refused to entertain far-fetched schemes to overturn the election.“The hearings have revealed how fragile our democracy is, and how important it is to install people of integrity into positions of public trust,” Barbara McQuade, a former US attorney in Michigan, wrote in an email. “We should consider fortifying our democracy through laws, such as amending the electoral count act to clarify the role of the vice-president and demanding transparency at the highest levels of government.”But even though Trump’s effort didn’t succeed in overturning the election in 2020, he unleashed a movement of election deniers that is now trying to set its hooks deep into the machinery of America’s election systems.The vast majority of Republicans continue to believe the 2020 election was stolen. At least more than 120 GOP nominees this year deny the results of the 2020 election, according to FiveThirtyEight. Some of them are running to be their state’s top election official, a position from which they would wield enormous power over election results. This month, Trump called the most powerful Republican in Wisconsin and asked him to help overturn the 2020 race.Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer closely involved in Trump’s strategy for overturning the election, is leading a push to recruit people who don’t believe the 2020 election to work the polls. While parties have long recruited people to be their eyes and ears in the precinct on election day, there’s concern that these new workers could spur more misunderstanding and confusion over election procedures.Meanwhile, experienced election officials, facing a wave of harassment, are leaving their jobs. Vigilante groups of citizens are going door-to-door looking for voter fraud and pushing officials to conduct shoddy post-election reviews and move to hand-counting election results. There is growing concern that election workers may unlawfully lead breaches into voting equipment and software.And perhaps most alarmingly, some local election boards have refused to certify primary races this year.“The January 6 committee hearings have revealed that the insurrection didn’t really end on January 6, it just metastasized,” Eisen said.Congress is already taking some steps to shore up the cracks that January 6 exposed. On Wednesday, a bipartisan group of senators introduced a bill that would clarify ambiguities in a 19th century law that would make it harder for Trump or any future presidential candidate to overturn a validly held election.07:50But Eisen, who voiced concern about the bipartisan senate proposal on Wednesday, said perhaps the most important outcome of the January 6 hearings would be criminal prosecutions for those who were involved in efforts to overturn the election, including Trump. The decision over whether to prosecute will likely fall to attorney general Merrick Garland, one of the principal audiences for the committee’s public hearings.“They should be held accountable because what they did was wrong. But, bringing them to justice will also prevent them from doing the same thing again and again. That is why it’s so urgent that prosecutors act,” he said.McQuade agreed that prosecution would be the most important consequence of the hearings.“We need to hold accountable those who attacked our democracy through criminal prosecution. An important part of criminal prosecution is deterrence,” she said. “Unless we prosecute those who worked to undermine our democracy, they will be emboldened to try again.” TopicsUS politicsJanuary 6 hearingsUS Capitol attackDonald TrumpanalysisReuse this content More

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      As the US watched the January 6 hearing, Fox News showed outrage – at Biden getting Covid

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      As the US watched the January 6 hearing, Fox News showed outrage – at Biden getting CovidFox News’ primetime stars chided Biden for contracting the virus they say he alleged couldn’t be caught with a vaccine On Thursday night as the Congressional hearings into the January 6 Capitol riot drew to a close, Tucker Carlson directed his outrage at a president he felt had lied and was not being held accountable for falsehoods that shook popular faith in the American democratic system. But he wasn’t talking about Donald Trump inciting rioters to storm the Capitol. He was talking about Joe Biden getting Covid.Whilemillions of people last night tuned into America’s other TV news channels and heard testimony about what Trump did, or rather did not do, during the hours when the rioters stormed the Capitol, Fox News viewers saw the network’s primetime stars Carlson and Sean Hannity chide the “twice jabbed, double-boosted” president for contracting the virus they say he alleged couldn’t be caught with a vaccine.Carlson opened his hour-long show with a spirited takedown of Biden, scolding him for spreading the virus during his Middle East trip and White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre for dismissing the question of where the president might have contracted the virus. Carson joked about the possibility of him losing his sense of smell, a much-discussed Covid symptom, denying the president the pleasure of sniffing the heads of women and girls – suspect past behavior that Biden had been singled out for in the wake of the #MeToo movement.Carson further took issue with the “proof of life” pictures and video the White House posted of Biden in isolation at work, and delighted in pointing out how the president wasn’t wearing a mask in any of them. He had Yale School of Public Health epidemiologist Harvey Risch on the show to tout ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine as far more effective defenses against Covid – despite considerable medical assertions to the contrary. “Doctors are more afraid of what happens if they go outside the permitted messaging,” Risch said.“Oh man, I feel like we’re losing a lot right now,” Carlson replied. “Thank you for your bravery and your commitment to actual science.”Science, and the left’s supposed efforts to monopolize it, was a consistent theme on both Carlson’s and Hannity’s shows. Next he questioned NBC News’ decision to air a report about women who chose to sterilize themselves in reaction to the reversal of Roe. And while it was clear that these women were making that decision as to bypass more conventional contraception options that the supreme court ruling has rendered illegal, Carson nonetheless saw this as the left pivoting from defending abortion to attacking fertility – a rebellion against family values that was of a piece with a larger corporate agenda. “Civilizational suicide” was the phrase he used to sum it all up.Still, the radio host Dana Loesch was quick to dismiss the decision of these women as no great loss. “Republicans will go out and have more babies,” she said, “How about that.”It wasn’t until about halfway through the show that Carson acknowledged that a significant portion of the country might be watching something else – not that he felt they especially needed to. “You all know what happened,” he said. “Some guy in Viking horns on mushrooms wandered around and made weird noises, and that was kind of it.” He put down the hearings as “more lifestyle liberal narcissism. That’s really the key to everything”.The show reached peak irony when Missouri Senator Josh Hawley appeared to discuss a Fox News story about undocumented Americans gaining access to free flights by presenting their arrest warrants as identification. Of course at around the same time Hawley was grandstanding on Fox News, the January 6 committee was presenting footage of him running from a pro-Trump mob he also egged on – footage that quickly made him a social media meme.“So much for Joe Biden and Doctor Fauci’s science,” snarled Hannity, who underscored Biden’s Covid reveal with an embarrassing picture of the president shrouding his whole face behind a mask. But unlike Carson, he actually spent quite a bit of airtime acknowledging the January 6 hearings – and debunking them as a complete waste of time. “Unsurprisingly, they did not establish a criminal case or reveal new, damning or incriminating evidence of President Trump as they promised they would,” said Hannity – who, of course, is extremely friendly with and a fierce defender of the former president. “A perfect example of people overpromising and not delivering. Kind of like the Trump-Russia collusion.”He skewered the committee for not calling the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, or Washington DC Mayor Muriel Bowser to testify about the lack of security at the Capitol while suggesting a slew of crude reinforcements that might’ve kept the mob at bay. Hannity raged at the committee for bringing in “hearsay witnesses” and presenting evidence that fit a predetermined, anti-Trump narrative. And then heasked why no Secret Service agents were called to testify, conveniently leaving out the part where they submitted a single text message to the committee after deleting all their exchanges from that day.But Hannity’s main takeaway was that the Capitol riots, while bad, paled in comparison to the Black Lives Matter protests that overwhelmed American cities during “the summer of 2020”. He argued that more needed to be done to avoid a repeat of the fiery violence that “peaceful protestors” had inflicted on police, businesses and civic institutions while showing clips of Schumer, Cory Booker, Kamala Harris and other prominent Democrats stoking that rage as Trump stands accused of doing. “Equal justice is dead in this country right now,” fumed former Trump aide Stephen Miller. “What we have is third-world justice.” TopicsJanuary 6 hearingsUS Capitol attackUS politicsFox NewsUS television industryanalysisReuse this content More

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      House panel says Trump ‘chose not to act’ during attack on US Capitol

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      House panel says Trump ‘chose not to act’ during attack on US CapitolThe committee investigating the January 6 riots shared testimony showing that the ex-president rejected pleas from even his family07:50Donald Trump refused for hours to call off the deadly attack perpetrated by a group of his supporters at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, the House select committee investigating the insurrection declared in its primetime hearing on Thursday.The committee shared testimony from former White House aides indicating that Trump repeatedly rejected pleas from his senior advisers and even his own family members – including his eldest daughter and adviser, Ivanka Trump – to immediately issue a statement calling off the mob swarming the Capitol.Pence Secret Service detail feared for their lives during Capitol riotRead moreAs Trump watched news coverage of the Capitol attack from the comfort of the White House dining room, the mob carried out violence that ultimately left several people dead, the committee said.“In the end, this is not, as it may appear, a story of inaction in a time of crisis, but instead it was the final action of Donald Trump’s own plan to usurp the will of the American people and remain in power,” said Democrat Elaine Luria, who co-led the Thursday hearing with Republican and fellow committee member Adam Kinzinger.More than three hours passed between the end of Trump’s speech to supporters at the Ellipse near the White House and his tweet telling insurrectionists to “go home”.In that time, a group of Trump’s supporters violently attacked law enforcement officers tasked to protect the Capitol and vandalized the building. Members of Congress, who had gathered at the Capitol to certify Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election, hid from the rioters and feared for their lives as the president stood by.“President Trump did not fail to act during the 187 minutes between leaving the Ellipse and telling the mob to go home. He chose not to act,” Kinzinger said. More

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      The January 6 panel put on a gripping ‘finale’ full of damning details about Trump

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      The January 6 panel put on a gripping ‘finale’ full of damning details about TrumpWhereas the first seven hearings set out unforgivingly what Trump had done, this one told a gripping story about what he did not do They did it. They pulled it off. Anyone who feared that the January 6 committee’s season finale would turn into an anti-climax – more Game of Thrones than M*A*S*H – need not have worried. There were shocks, horrors and even laughs.The eight “episodes” have exceeded all expectations with their crisp narrative and sharp editing, a far cry from the usual dry proceedings on Capitol Hill. Each has recapped what came before, teased what is to come and compellingly joined the dots against Donald Trump.Much of the credit must go to James Goldston, the former president of ABC News, who was brought in to help produce the hearings like a true crime series. Give that man an Emmy (if only to infuriate Trump, a TV obsessive).Some viewers might have been disappointed on Thursday by the absence of chairman Bennie Thompson due to coronavirus (though he did join to open and close the hearing via video link). Yet with Liz Cheney in the chair and Goldston in the editing suite, a Grand Guignol was guaranteed.There were chilling details of a US vice-president’s staff calling their families because they feared death as the rioters closed in, having breached the Capitol that January 6 afternoon; there were damning stories about Trump watching an insurrection for hours on live TV and resisting pressure from senior staff to intervene; there were comical glimpses of a rightwing senator fleeing the mob he had emboldened.And from outtakes on 7 January there was the defining image of Trump struggling to read a teleprompter, stumbling over simple words such as “yesterday”, and especially those that acknowledged he was a loser, and banging the presidential lectern like a frustrated child. “This election is now over. Congress has certified the results – I don’t want to say the election’s over.”02:07To be in the Cannon Caucus Room as it all unfolded was to feel electricity in the air. It buzzed with the anticipation of reporters, photographers, TV camera operators, police officers, congressional aides and spectators. Once proceedings were under way beneath two giant chandeliers and the high, ornately-carved ceiling, Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal – who had been trapped in the House balcony on January 6 – could be seen fighting back tears as the scenes of carnage were replayed on a big screen.Whereas the first seven hearings set out unforgivingly what Trump had done, this one told a gripping story about what he did not do, for 187 minutes on 6 January 2021. As his enraged supporters stormed the US Capitol, the president did not call them off or contact senior law enforcement or military officials who could have curbed the violence as the US Capitol Police and city police were vastly outnumbered.What he did do was watch TV in his dining room next to the Oval Office, phone senators in a bid to make them delay the certification of his election defeat byJoe Biden, and call his unhinged lawyer and fellow coup-plotter Rudy Giuliani. It was not so much Nero fiddling while Rome burns as Nero dancing maniacally in the flames.The details were set out with the committee’s now customary slick and pacy presentation, cutting seamlessly from video deposition to 3D graphic, from archive footage to document excerpt, from Trump tweet to live witness.Thompson and Cheney delivered pithy statements about Trump’s dereliction of duty. Adam Kinzinger, a Republican member of the panel, summed up: “President Trump did not fail to act during the 187 minutes between leaving the Ellipse and telling the mob to go home. He chose not to act.”Congresswoman Elaine Luria noted that Trump was told that the Capitol was under attack within 15 minutes of leaving the stage at the Ellipse near the White House. He had just held a rally, demanding that heavily-armed supporters, who later marched to the Capitol, be allowed in. A photo of Trump in the Oval Office had the caption: “Minute 11.”Luria said: “At 1.25pm President Trump went to the private dining room off the Oval Office. From 1.25 until 4:00 the president stayed in his dining room … There was no official record of what President Trump did while in the dining room.”The dining room TV, she added, “was tuned to Fox News all afternoon” in perhaps the least surprising revelation of the hearings so far.Indeed, 3D computer graphics showed the Oval Office and dining room, which had a TV above its fireplace, showing Fox News as it was on January 6 – a neat touch. Then there was a display of call logs and the presidential diary from that afternoon, both blank. And the presidential photographer was told “no photographs”.Then came another pivot to video of a deposition by Pat Cipollone, the former White House counsel. He was asked if he was aware of Trump calling the defence secretary, or the homeland security secretary, or the attorney general. He was not.The drama continued to build. There was more footage from the riot at the Capitol, which never diminishes in power, and a reminder of how the mob was just feet away from Mike Pence. A member of the crowd said: ““Mike Pence has screwed us!”There was video testimony from an unnamed and unseen White House security official whose voice, borrowing more TV grammar, had been distorted to protect his identity: “The members of the VP [Secret Service] detail at this time were starting to fear for their own lives… There were calls to say goodbye to family members… For whatever reason on the ground the VP detail thought this was about to get very ugly.”Did Trump call his devoutly righthand man to check if he was OK? He did not. At 2.24pm, Trump tweeted that Pence “didn’t have the courage” to overturn the election in his favour. Everyone agreed it was appalling timing.Could Trump have addressed the nation? Again, the hearing was a model of clarity. A graphic showed how close he was to the White House briefing room. Sarah Matthews, a former deputy White House press secretary, testified in person: “It would take probably less than 60 seconds to get from the Oval Office dining room to the press briefing room. There’s a camera that is on in there at all times. If the president wanted to address people, he could have done so.”Then, something extraordinary happened. A burst of laughter echoing in the cavernous caucus room. How could it be? The answer was Republican Senator Josh Hawley. The big screen showed a photo of him with fist raised in support of the insurrectionists earlier on January 6 – haughty, preening, self-satisfied – and cut to a video of Hawley running for his life from the rioters as if auditioning for Chariots of Fire. Priceless.01:08Cheney remained po-faced on the dais, maintaining gravitas on this solemn occasion. Was she roaring with laughter inside? We shall never know. But it was another brilliant piece of choreography, guaranteed to provide fodder to late-night TV hosts and go viral on social media.Kinzinger and Luria, both military veterans, formed an effective double act. Kinzinger delivered a barnstorming ending. “Donald Trump’s conduct on January 6 was a supreme violation of his oath of office and a complete dereliction of his duty to our nation. It is a stain on our history. It is a dishonour to all those who have sacrificed and died in the service of our democracy.”Luria concluded: “President Trump did not then and does not now have the character or courage to say to the American people what his own people know to be true. He is responsible for the attack on the Capitol on Jan 6.”And yet the door was left open for more. Thompson and Cheney announced that more evidence is being gathered and hearings will resume in September. Will this be a sequel that lives up to expectations, like The Godfather Part II, Toy Story 2 or Top Gun: Maverick? Or will it be Jaws 2? One way to settle the matter would be get Pence here to testify.American politics has been a gruelling horror show for at least seven years now. The House committee hearings have shone an unforgiving light into every crevice with some master storytelling. The substance always matters but, for the power of persuasion, they have shown that style matters too.TopicsUS newsThe US politics sketchDonald TrumpHouse of RepresentativesUS politicsUS Capitol attackanalysisReuse this content More

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      January 6 committee watches Josh Hawley running from Capitol riots – video

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      The committee into the January 6 US Capitol riot showed Josh Hawley, the rightwing senator of Missouri, raising his fist in solidarity with the crowds massed before later playing security footage of him fleeing as rioters breached the Capitol

      Jan 6 hearing: Trump said ‘I don’t want to say the election is over’ in speech outtake one day after riot
      Republican Josh Hawley fled January 6 rioters – and Twitter ran with it More

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      Trump, modern Nero, watched the Capitol sacked from a White House dining room | Lloyd Green

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      Trump, modern Nero, watched the Capitol sacked from a White House dining roomLloyd GreenTrump never reached out to the FBI or the national guard to protect Congress. He rebuffed entreaties from his aides – including his own daughter – to end the crisis. That’s because he liked what he saw Thursday night’s congressional hearing on the 6 January 2021 attack on the US Capitol lived up to its billing as a season finale. A modern-day Nero, Trump watched reports of the invasion of the Capitol on Fox News from the comfort of his private White House dining room. The commander-in-chief ignored repeated calls to end the mayhem.“The mob was his people.” Trump never reached out to the military, the FBI, the defense department or the national guard to intervene. He rebuffed entreaties from Ivanka Trump, Mark Meadows and Pat Cipollone to end the downwardly spiraling situation.Trump never walked to the press briefing room to say “enough”. He liked what he saw. His minions had taken matters into their own hands and brought Congress to a halt.Trump struggled to record a message to disperse to his fans. He “loved” them; they were “special.” We heard this before. There were “good people on both sides” in Charlottesville.Chillingly, the security detail assigned to the vice-president began to say “good-bye” to their families. If Mike Pence came to hang from makeshift gallows that was his problem. Trump thought he deserved it. Pence was his vice-president, he believed – with loyalty to him, not the US constitution. He was expendable.The vice-president “folded,” he “screwed us,” according to the rioters. Trump’s tweet at 2.24pm blamed no one but his hapless running mate.Sarah Matthews, Trump’s deputy press secretary, testified that her boss had given the rioters a “green light”. He “poured gasoline on a fire,” to use her words. “Rioters heard the president’s message”, to quote Rep Adam Kinzinger. In turn, they acted accordingly.Senator Josh Hawley fled the Senate that day after earlier riling up the crowd with his outstretched arm and clenched fist. Cosplay can be dangerous to your health. Hawley reportedly harbors ambition for 2024.The tumult of 6 January was not spontaneous. Trump knew that that the crowd was armed, but sought to accompany them to the Capitol. He wanted to obstruct the certification of the election with a phalanx behind him.Carnage and destruction were OK. The ends justified all means.Here, past was prelude. In 2016, Trump signaled that he might not accept the election’s results if they did not meet his expectations. As Covid descended in the spring of 2020, he began to refer to November’s upcoming ballot as rigged, months before a single vote had been cast. The events of 6 January horrify and shock, but they cannot be characterized as a surprise.A recording of Steve Bannon evidenced that Trump’s reaction was premeditated. The prosecution has rested in his criminal case; he will not be taking the stand.Trump’s standing slowly erodes, even as Trumpism retains its firm grip on Republicans. Hours before the committee’s eighth public hearing, Representative Dan Crenshaw, a Texas Republican, announced that it would “suck” to nominate a presidential candidate who labored under criminal indictment. A poll of Michigan Republicans released earlier this week places Ron DeSantis, Florida’s governor, in a foot-race with the 45th president.Still, the Republicans are no longer the party of Abraham Lincoln. On Tuesday, Maryland Republicans selected a novitiate of QAnon to be their gubernatorial candidate and a neo-confederate secessionist as their pick for state attorney general. Even as Trump loses altitude, the “Big Lie” – the false claim that he actually won the last presidential election – retains its vitality.Also on Tuesday, Arizona Republicans censured Rusty Bowers, a Republican and leader in the state’s legislature, after he had testified last month before the committee and denied that Trump won Arizona. Fealty to “Dear Leader” remains a tribal litmus test.Trump’s dream remains alive. That nightmare is now woven into America’s political tapestry. Our “very stable genius” continues to demand that state legislators undo the results of 2020 – as if they possess that power. This month, Robin Vos, speaker of Wisconsin’s state assembly, told of Trump recently asking him to do just that.Beyond boosting DeSantis’s ambitions, the latest hearing won’t do anything to improve Republican chances of retaking the Senate. Despite inflation, rising crime and Joe Biden’s record-shattering unpopularity, Democrats are mild favorites to retain the upper chamber.Trump’s antics exact a price. This was not the committee’s final hearing. After Labor Day, broadcasts will resume. The midterms will be less than two months away. By then, the justice department will likely be immersed in weighing whether to prosecute Donald J Trump.
      Lloyd Green is a regular contributor and served in the Department of Justice from 1990 to 1992
      TopicsUS politicsOpinionJanuary 6 hearingsDonald TrumpUS Capitol attackRepublicansDemocratscommentReuse this content More