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      January 6 hearings make for gripping TV, but are voters paying attention?

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      January 6 hearings make for gripping TV, but are voters paying attention? The committee’s tightly scripted production has impressed political junkies but Democrats worry many Americans are focused elsewhere Did you see episode three? The president calls his deputy a “pussy” and “wimp” for refusing to support his coup. An angry mob then goes after said deputy wanting to hang him. A legal scholar who cooked up the plan asks the president for a pardon.Thursday’s congressional hearing into the January 6 2021 attack on the US Capitol veered into you-couldn’t-make-it-up territory. But while political aficionados were agog, it remained less certain how many citizens were paying attention at lunchtime on a midweek workday.As the panel’s sessions near the halfway mark, their explosive narrative about Republican president Donald Trump’s failed power grab is struggling to break through to an American public consumed by economic anxiety. Democrats could find that gas at $5 a gallon, not the threat to democracy, looms largest in November’s midterm elections.“People are much more concerned about living day to day,” said Joni Bryan, 59, a non-profit founder and store manager who did not watch the third hearing and was attending a gathering of religious conservatives in Nashville on Friday. “Just this year my gas, my food and my rent has increased a thousand dollars a month so I’m having to take another job to try to pay just for what I had last year. It’s really hard out here and right now it seems like the administration couldn’t care less.”There are seven Democrats and two Republicans on the House of Representatives’ January 6 committee. After a year of painstaking work and more than a thousand interviews, it wanted to make a splash in the public arena. The committee enlisted James Goldston, the former president of ABC News, to help its presentation.The committee chairman, Bennie Thompson, and vice-chair, Liz Cheney, have sought to make a methodical case that Trump’s lies about the 2020 election led directly to his supporters’ insurrection. The sessions have drawn comparison with true crime TV series or podcasts, with each “episode” having its own theme and ending with a tantalising preview of the next (though there is no mystery about whodunnit).The panel has shown clips from the violent assault on the US Capitol and also from closed-door interviews with Trump aides and associates who were trying to dissuade him from spreading falsehoods about an election he lost. The former attorney general, Bill Barr, describedhis claims of fraud as “bullshit” and remarked that Trump was becoming “detached from reality”.On Thursday, Ivanka Trump’s chief of staff, Julie Radford, was seen telling the panel in a deposition that Trump called Vice-President Mike Pence the “P-word”, meaning “pussy”, for refusing to overturn the election. Other witnesses have appeared in person. Capitol police officer Caroline Edwards described a bloody “war scene” and hours of hand-to-hand combat.Not all the details are new but Democrats hope that, by weaving them together, the cumulative effect will provide a wake-up call to America about the continued threat to its democracy. Many election deniers are running as Republican candidates in the midterms and Trump appears poised for another presidential run in 2024.Donna Brazile, a former acting chairperson of the Democratic National Committee, said: “The hearings so far have been very compelling and informational. This is just as important as the Iran-contra hearings, the Watergate hearings, the 9/11 hearings. It’s to encourage the public to follow all of the facts and understand what happened because the American people should be once again reminded that the United States of America was under attack.”It was not necessary to “join the dots” right away, Brazile added. “We know, that as a result of the pandemic, the entire global economy is facing strains and stresses in terms of the demand for fuel and food but this notion that we can’t do two things at one time is just political spin. This is about the future of American democracy.”The first hearing, held at 8pm to receive maximum exposure on primetime television, was watched by an estimated 20 million people, according to the Nielsen ratings agency. This ranked below other political events such as Joe Biden’s State of the Union address, which pulled in 38 million viewers in March, but higher than the first televised hearing of the impeachment inquiry into Trump, which attracted about 14 million in 2019.The first January 6 hearing also beat the Oscars, Grammys, Emmys and Golden Globes, all of which drew fewer than 10 million viewers last year. The opening ceremonies of the Olympic Games attracted 15.1 million and 14 million viewers in 2020 and 2021 respectively.But Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, cautioned: “Twenty million watching, that’s great, but you’re still talking about a tiny fraction of the actual voting pool. If they’re not watching, they’re not going to be very influenced by it. Even if they are watching, it doesn’t mean that you can somehow put the emphasis on January 6 or the plot to steal the presidency rather than inflation and potential recession and all the other problems on the plate right now.”The riot happened nearly 18 months ago and, to many voters, democracy can seem like an abstract, intangible concept. Sabato added: “If they’re concerned at all, they say, ‘That’s esoteric, we’ll get to that eventually, let’s worry about that in 2024. Right now, I want something done about my gas prices. I can’t believe I’m paying $6 a gallon.’ They don’t even think about anything else.”Friday marked the 50th anniversary of the arrest of five men for breaking into and bugging the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate complex in Washington, triggering a scandal that led to the resignation of the president, Richard Nixon. It is estimated that the average household watched about 30 hours of the Senate Watergate hearings during the summer of 1973.The January 6 committee faces a tougher task to cut through and shape the national conversation in a fragmented landscape of cable news, social media and “alternative facts”. Republican leaders have denounced the hearings as a partisan, politically motivated witch-hunt designed to deflect attention from Biden’s economic troubles. The conservative Fox News network refused to show the first hearing in prime time, although it did broadcast the second and third.Frank Luntz, a pollster and political messaging expert, believes that the committee has made some missteps, for example by starting the all-important first hearing with speeches from Thompson and Cheney before playing a video of what happened. “If you want to influence people you show them the facts, you show them the evidence, and then you do the interpretation, not the other way around,” he said.Trump loyalists who backed his election lies were denied places on the committee. Their absence makes it easy for Trump voters to dismiss, Luntz added. “It’s not about being fair, it’s actually about how you change the minds of people. If I’m a Trump person, all that I’m seeing is the negativity and they’re trying to jam him. My reaction is, well, this is one side of the story, I haven’t heard the other side.”At the Faith & Freedom “Road to Majority” conference in Nashville on Friday, such views were commonplace. Tommy Crosslin, 54, a singer-songwriter, said: “It’s unfair. The story has two sides but I think we’re only hearing one side. Americans have open minds, but they know the truth and the whole truth is not imparted into the January 6 hearings. The American people are smart enough to discern what’s going on.”A national survey this week by Navigator Research found 28% of registered voters have heard “a lot” about the hearings, 35% have heard “some” and 37% have heard “a little/ nothing”. Two in three Republicans say the committee is too focused on the past and there should be a focus on issues facing the country today. A Washington Post headline observed: “Some feel hopeful, others angry. Many aren’t watching at all.”In such a context, few Democrats believe the hearings will make a significant impact in the midterm elections, where the party holding the White House traditionally fares badly. Biden, whose approval rating is in the doldrums, acknowledged in an Associated Press interview this week: “People are really, really down.”But the committee’s findings may have longer-term consequences by putting Turmp at risk of criminal prosecution.David Rudolf, a leading trial lawyer seen in the true crime TV series The Staircase, said: “The committee is aiming at one audience and that’s the Department of Justice. What they’ve put together is a very compelling opening statement, laying out, just like you would for a jury, what the case is going to be, a prediction of the evidence.“From my perspective, it is as persuasive and well put together as any opening statement I’ve ever seen. It’s exactly the kind of opening statement that I would make if I was prosecuting Trump and [lawyer John] Eastman and [adviser Peter] Navarro and various others and I think that’s what they’re aiming for.”TopicsJanuary 6 hearingsThe ObserverUS Capitol attackUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      ‘A one-sided witch-hunt’: angry Trump lashes out at January 6 hearings

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      ‘A one-sided witch-hunt’: angry Trump lashes out at January 6 hearingsFormer president attacks ‘disgraceful performance of the unselect committee’ and denies he bullied Mike Pence to overturn election Donald Trump has launched an angry verbal attack on the congressional January 6 hearings, dismissing them as a “rigged deal” and “one-sided witch-hunt” that are “getting terrible ratings”.In his first public appearance since the televised sessions began, Trump on Friday claimed without evidence that the House of Representatives panel has made its case using doctored videos and deceptively edited witness depositions.Biden says Americans are ‘really, really down’ in rare one-on-one interviewRead moreHe also denied the allegation made on Thursday that he bullied Vice-President Mike Pence to overturn the 2020 election. “I never called Mike Pence a wimp,” Trump told a gathering of religious conservatives in Nashville, Tennessee. “Mike Pence had a chance to be great, he had a chance, frankly, to be historic. Mike – and I say it sadly because I like him – but Mike did not have the courage to act.”Trump’s desperate attempts to remain in power after he lost the election to Joe Biden have been thrown back into the spotlight by the select committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol, with visceral footage and damning testimony from his closest aides and family.The panel is methodically making the case that the attack on the US Capitol was an attempted coup and that Trump was at the centre of the conspiracy. On Thursday, it heard that the attack jeopardized Pence’s life. The findings could prompt the justice department to pursue a criminal prosecution against Trump.Wearing a dark suit, white shirt and red tie, the former president walked on to a stage framed by a faux classical temple with Corinthian columns in a ballroom at the Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center in Nashville, Tennessee.Trump was nearly two hours later than scheduled at the Faith & Freedom Coalition’s “Road to Majority” conference, but attendees gathering under a ceiling painted to resemble a blue sky and clouds greeted him with rapturous cheers and chants of “USA! USA!”Unrepentant, he continued to push his “big lie” of a stolen election and likened Pence to a “robot” and “human conveyor belt” for accepting the advice of those who said he did not have the authority to reject state electors and therefore keep Trump in the Oval Office.Trump described the hearings as an “insurrection hoax” reminiscent of the investigations into his election campaign ties with Russia but said it was ultimately “peanuts” by comparison.“There’s no cleaner example of the menacing spirit that has devoured the American left than the disgraceful performance being staged by the ‘unselect’ committee,” Trump said during a rambling speech. “They’re con people. They’re con artists. Every one of them is a radical left hater, hates all of you, hates me even more than you, but I’m just trying to help you out.“The ‘unselects’ have shredded every standard of decency, fairness, precedent, tradition, separation of powers, executive privilege and due process. Nobody’s ever done this before. They are knowingly spinning a fake and phony narrative and in a chilling attempt to weaponise the justice system against their political opponents.”The committee hearings have turned the words of Trump’s inner circle against him. His attorney general William Barr was seen in a deposition describing the claims of election fraud as “bullshit”, and the former president’s daughter testified that she accepted Barr’s assessment.Without offering evidence, Trump claimed that the panel was using video that has been misleadingly doctored and edited out of context. “The committee is taking the testimony of witnesses who defended me for eight hours, chopping it up and truncating soundbites to make it sound like what they said was absolutely terrible,” he remarked.He added: “Just remember, it’s also the people that weren’t allowed to even testify but wanted to. A lot of people wanted to go and testify about what they saw and how crooked it was. Meanwhile, the committee refuses to play any of the tape of people saying the good things, the things that we want to hear.”The former president went on to hurl puerile insults at Congressman Adam Kinzinger, one of two Republicans on the committee along with seven Democrats.“It’s a one-way street. It’s a rigged deal. It’s a disgrace and it’s never happened in the history of our country where we have no representation,” Trump said. “They say, ‘Oh, they have Republicans!’ Who are they? Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, the crier. He cries every time he speaks.”Pointing to his head, Trump mocked: “This guy’s got a mental disorder.” Pretending to trace tears from his eyes, he added: “He cries. Every time this guy gets up to speak, he starts crying. I said there’s something wrong with that guy. These are our representatives.”Trump said that he would “very, very seriously” consider pardons for those involved in the riot if he became president again. “What happened on January 6th was a simple protest that got out of hand,” he said.He compared the size of a crowd at his speech earlier in the day to that which attended civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have A Dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial in 1963. “I made a nice speech but I liked his speech better,” he quipped.He claimed that “no one was killed” except the Trump supporter Ashli Babbitt, who was fatally shot while attempting to climb through a broken window inside the Capitol. In fact, a bipartisan Senate report connected seven deaths to the insurrection.Trump summed up: “Let’s be clear, this is not a congressional investigation, this horrible situation that’s wasting everyone’s time. This is a theatrical production of partisan political fiction that’s getting these terrible, terrible ratings, and they’re going crazy.”He also used his speech to attack the Biden administration and insist that war would never have broken out in Ukraine if he was still president. As is customary at his rallies, he teased another White House run in 2024. “Would anyone like me to run for president?” he asked. There was a sustained roar of approval from the crowd.It is hard to find anyone at the Faith & Freedom event who is being swayed by the January 6 committee. Asked if she watched Thursday’s hearing, Susanne Thoen, 67, a retired human resources director from Nashville, said: “The farce? Excuse me? You mean the leftist agenda? No. There was no insurrection. I’m not going to waste my time watching the mainstream media.”Joseph Padilla, 42, a retired US marine, added: “It’s another distraction. Is this something that they’re trying to make a big push to divide us more because of the midterms coming up? They’re trying to point out flaws because this administration has nothing but flaws.”TopicsDonald TrumpUS politicsUS Capitol attacknewsReuse this content More

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      Ex-Trump adviser Peter Navarro pleads not guilty to contempt charges in January 6 case – as it happened

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      Then there are those who refuse to cooperate with the January 6 committee, such as Peter Navarro, a former top adviser on trade to Trump. He’s just pleaded not guilty to two charges of contempt of Congress over his refusal to provide documents or testify to the House panel, Reuters reports.Navarro was indicted and taken into custody earlier this month on the charges, despite his insistence that executive privilege protected him from cooperating with the probe.As The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell has reported:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;} Navarro was referred to the justice department for criminal contempt of Congress by the full House of Representatives in April after he entirely ignored a subpoena issued to him in February demanding that he produce documents and appear for a deposition.
      The top White House trade adviser to Trump was deeply involved in efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election from the very start, the Guardian has previously reported, deputizing his aides to help produce reports on largely debunked claims of election fraud.
      Navarro was also in touch with Trump’s legal team led by Rudy Giuliani and operatives working from a Trump “war room” at the Willard hotel in Washington to stop Biden’s election certification from taking place on January 6 – a plan he christened the “Green Bay Sweep”.Trump aide Peter Navarro ordered to testify before grand jury over January 6Read moreThanks for joining the US politics blog for another day of news from Washington and across the United States. The ongoing January 6 hearings were a major story this week as were the Senate negotiations over gun control, both of which will continue next week.Here’s a recap of what happened today:
      Ex-Trump advisor Peter Navarro pled not guilty to two charges of contempt of Congress in relation to the January 6 attack on the US Capitol by extremist supporters of the former president who were trying, in vain, to prevent the certification of Joe Biden’s election victory.
      Trump told his own version of his interactions with vice-president Mike Pence in the run-up to January 6, denying that he’d insulted his running mate or pressured him to overturn the 2020 election.
      Speaking of Pence, he gave an interview to The Wall Street Journal and hinted he was considering a run for president in 2024 — which Trump has said he’s thinking of doing as well.
      John Cornyn, the Republican senator trying to reach a gun control compromise with Democrats, was booed when he went back home to Texas to speak at a state party convention. Many in the state are apparently not a fan of his negotiations on firearms legislation.
      The Food and Drug administration approved Covid-19 vaccines for the youngest Americans, a development Biden cheered.
      Monday is the Juneteenth federal holiday and thus, the blog will return on Tuesday, with the supreme court set to release another batch of decisions at 10 am eastern time, and the January 6 committee meeting later in the day.Legendary journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein reunited today to mark the 50th anniversary of the Watergate break-in, the event that came to define their careers and resulted in President Richard Nixon’s eventual resignation.But much of today’s discussion at the DC headquarters of The Washington Post, the newspaper that published Woodward and Bernstein’s history-making scoops 50 years ago, focused on more recent events.Bernstein drew a direct comparison between Nixon and Donald Trump, who he described as “a seditious, criminal president”.Pointing to the January 6 insurrection, Bernstein said Trump “staged an attempted coup, such as you would see in a junta [or] in a banana republic”.“But one of the things that’s developing that’s very different than in Watergate is that the wife of a supreme court justice is now part of the story,” Bernstein said, referring to Ginni Thomas, the conservative activist and wife of Justice Clarence Thomas.The January 6 committee has obtained messages showing Thomas communicated with former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and conservative lawyer John Eastman about efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.“It looks very much like — and certainly is the opinion of a number of people on that committee — that she is caught up in the conspiracy and very likely is a co-conspirator,” Bernstein said.Noting that Thomas has indicated she will cooperate with the committee’s requests for information, Woodward said of the committee members, “They’re treading very carefully, and I think wisely.”Texas senator John Cornyn has the attention of Democrats in Washington for being willing to negotiate over a gun control compromise, but those efforts have apparently earned him the ire of some of his fellow Republicans back home.Here’s a clip of how his speech went at the state party’s convention:US Sen John Cornyn gets viciously booed during much of his speech here at the Republican Party of Texas Convention. Here’s his closing remarks and the cascade of boos. pic.twitter.com/m2Hua9WdrV— Jeremy Wallace (@JeremySWallace) June 17, 2022
      Cornyn is the lead Republican negotiator on the gun control compromise, which Democrats have acknowledged is nowhere near as strong as they would like it to be, but better than nothing when it comes to responding to the mass shootings in Uvalde, Texas and Buffalo New York.The Houston Chronicle has a look at the stakes for Cornyn back home, where his detractors accuse him of violating their “God given rights.”In the telling of the January 6 committee’s witnesses, Trump reasoned with, pressured and finally berated Mike Pence in the lead-up to the certification of the 2020 election, all in a failed effort to stop Joe Biden from taking the White House.Speaking in Nashville, the former president has offered his take on what happened between him and Pence in the closing weeks of their term:Trump: “I never called Mike Pence a wimp. I never called him a wimp. Mike Pence had a chance to be great. He had a chance to be frankly historic… But Mike did not have the courage to act… Mike was afraid of whatever he was afraid of.”— David Smith (@SmithInAmerica) June 17, 2022
      Trump: They said I told Pence to decide the election. “I never said that. It’s not true. I wanted him to send it up to the legislatures, so it goes back to Pennsylvania, state legislatures.”— David Smith (@SmithInAmerica) June 17, 2022
      Trump has long insisted, with no evidence, that he won the electoral college in 2020, but here he is now claiming that he also won the popular vote. In reality, he was defeated by an even bigger margin than in 2016.Trump: “We did much better in the second election than the first. Millions and millions more votes… They say we lost. Don’t believe it.”— David Smith (@SmithInAmerica) June 17, 2022
      The committee aired testimony yesterday that on the morning of January 6, Trump called Pence and used harsh language — including what one witness said was the “p word” — to get him to go along with his plot to prevent the certification of the 2020 vote. Trump has a different take:Trump: “I said to Mike, ‘If you do this, you could be Thomas Jefferson’. And after all it went down I looked at him one day and said, ‘Mike, you’re not Thomas Jefferson’.”— David Smith (@SmithInAmerica) June 17, 2022
      On stage now at the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s event in Nashville, Trump has condemned the January 6 committee in language that’s familiar to anyone who remembers his time in the White House.The Guardian’s David Smith is there:Trump on investigations: “It’s the same people with the same words. If you just insert the same words with ‘January 6’ instead of ‘Russia, Russia, Russia’.”— David Smith (@SmithInAmerica) June 17, 2022
      Trump on January 6 committee: “Every one of them is a radical left hater. Hates all of you. Hates me even more but I’m just trying to help you out.”— David Smith (@SmithInAmerica) June 17, 2022
      Trump: “They’re knowingly spinning a fake and phony narrative in a chilling attempt” to hurt opponents. “Video that’s been deceptively edited.”— David Smith (@SmithInAmerica) June 17, 2022
      Trump: “What you’re seeing is a complete and total lie. It’s a complete and total fraud.”— David Smith (@SmithInAmerica) June 17, 2022
      Trump: “They have their narrative and they know we’re leading in every single poll.. Crazy Liz Cheney.”— David Smith (@SmithInAmerica) June 17, 2022
      Republican Cheney’s opposition to Trump has particularly high stakes for her continued career as the lone House representative for Wyoming. She faces a primary challenger endorsed by the former president who appears to be beating her in opinion polls.The Wall Street Journal has secured an interview with Trump’s vice-president Mike Pence, the star of yesterday’s January 6 hearing, though he himself didn’t attend.The interview contains a bit of news: Pence is thinking about running for the Republican nomination in 2024 — which would likely put him up against Trump, whom he hasn’t spoken to in “about a year”:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Mr. Pence said his own decision on whether to mount another campaign, likely to come in early 2023, will be based on prayer with his wife and conversations with friends, not on whether Mr. Trump decides to run.
      “We’ll go where we’re called,” Mr. Pence said. “But I won’t let anybody else make that decision for me.”The article shows Pence is otherwise returning to his mainstream Republican roots, stumping for candidates such as Ohio governor Mike DeWine, Georgia governor Brian Kemp and Arizona governor Doug Ducey — all of whom clashed with Trump. On Monday, Pence will be in Chicago for a speech on economic policy, a potent attack line against president Joe Biden, given how high inflation is in the United States.As we await Trump’s speech at the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s event in Nashville, take a look at this report from Hugo Lowell on tension between the January 6 committee and federal prosecutors, who would like to take a look at what the congressional probe has found:Tensions between the US justice department and the House of Representatives January 6 select committee have escalated after federal prosecutors complained that their inability to access witness transcripts was hampering criminal investigations into rioters who stormed the Capitol.The complaint that came from the heads of the justice department’s national security and criminal divisions and the US attorney for Washington Matthew Graves showed a likely collision course for the parallel congressional and criminal probes into the Capitol attack.“The interviews the select committee conducted are not just potentially relevant to our overall criminal investigations, but are likely relevant to specific prosecutions,” Graves wrote, alongside assistant attorneys general Kenneth Polite and Matthew Olsen.“The select committee’s failure to grant the department access to these transcripts complicates the department’s ability to investigate and prosecute those who engaged in criminal conduct in relation to the January 6 attack on the Capitol.”Capitol attack prosecutors press January 6 committee for transcripts Read moreIt looks like the gun control negotiations aren’t going as smoothly as expected in the Senate.GOP source familiar with gun talks says “it’s going to be a “long time before bill text is released.” Source blames D staff “for trying to relitigate and reopen issues in the bill text that have already been agreed to in principle at the member level.” Dem source disputes that— Manu Raju (@mkraju) June 17, 2022
      Dems believe they are still making progress, and the Dem source they are still going through the back-and-forth of translating principles they agreed upon into detailed legislative text. Talks between members and at the staff level are expected to continue over the weekend,— Manu Raju (@mkraju) June 17, 2022
      But even if negotiators reach an agreement on bill text over the weekend, the Senate has very little time to process a guns package by the end of the week. The chamber is not in session until Tuesday and the Senate is expected to begin a two-week recess at week’s end.— Manu Raju (@mkraju) June 17, 2022
      Senators want a bill passed before the July 4th recess because they are worried that allowing it to hang over two weeks while members are back home will halt any momentum the talks have enjoyed.Boyfriend loophole and funding for states on red flag laws need to be resolved— Manu Raju (@mkraju) June 17, 2022
      Recall that the week began with news of a compromise reached between Democrats and Republicans to pass legislation in response to the mass shootings in Uvalde, Texas and Buffalo, New York.It appeared to have momentum. The Senate’s Democratic leader said he would put the legislation up for a vote as soon as it was written, while the chamber’s top Republican Mitch McConnell said he would support it, boosting its chances of passage since it will need the support of at least 10 of his party’s lawmakers to pass. But now it’s Friday, and here we are.The January 6 committee has announced it will hold its fourth hearing next Tuesday at 1 pm eastern time.New: Jan. 6 committee formally announces fourth hearing will take place on June 21 at 1p ET— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) June 17, 2022
      At the third hearing held on Thursday, committee members detailed the efforts by Trump to pressure his vice-president Mike Pence to overturn the 2020 election at the joint sitting of Congress set for January 6, 2021.‘System nearly failed’: US democracy was left hanging by the thread of Pence’s defianceRead moreAs communities across the state grapple with a historic bout of flooding that has imperiled the water supply of its largest city, many in Montana are wondering: where is the governor?State officials have only said that Greg Gianforte was on a planned trip abroad, but wouldn’t mention the location. The answer appears to be Italy’s Tuscany region, according to Newsy: .css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;} Newsy obtained a photo of Gianforte and the first lady at a restaurant in Casole d’Elsa, which is a small village in the Tuscany region of Italy. The photo is time-stamped at 9:31 p.m. local time Wednesday.
      A source that wishes to remain anonymous sent us a photo of the couple dining with multiple other people. The governor’s office confirmed Gianforte was out of the country when it was noticed his lieutenant governor signed a statewide emergency declaration as acting governor.
      A spokesperson said he and the first lady left late last week on a long-planned personal trip, but details about the timeline and the destination were left out.The Montana Free Press reports on how cagey the state has been about the whereabouts of Gianforte, a Republican elected in 2020:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;} A spokesperson for the governor’s office has said only that Gianforte left the country last week, before the Yellowstone River rose to take out massive chunks of infrastructure and isolate entire communities in Park, Carbon and Stillwater counties, on a “long-scheduled personal trip” with his wife, Susan Gianforte. But the office has declined to say what country Gianforte is visiting and specifically when the governor will be back in Montana.
      “The governor is returning early and as quickly as possible,” gubernatorial spokesperson Brooke Strokye said in a statement Wednesday afternoon in response to repeated questions from the media.
      The governor’s whereabouts have been an increasing topic of speculation on social media after Lt. Gov. Kristen Juras signed a declaration of disaster Tuesday in response to the flooding in southern Montana.
      “The fact that [the flooding] is so extreme and his office has just been pretty recalcitrant about where he is and what’s going on is not great,” said Eric Austin, a public administration professor at Montana State University who teaches a class on government leadership and ethics.
      There are legitimate reasons why a public official would not share their location during international travel, Austin said, but during a natural disaster, “perceptually, that doesn’t really help.”According to NBC Montana, Gianforte was supposed to return to the state on Thursday.Our David Smith is at the Faith and Freedom Road to Majority conference in Nashville, Tennessee, a fascinating gathering of parts of the Republican party.Donald Trump is speaking there a day after he was accused on Capitol Hill of endangering his own vice president’s life, calling Mike Pence the p-word (about which Stephen Colbert cogitates) and “setting the mob” on him, per the House select committee.Senator Rick Scott, formerly Florida governor, is there and speaking. here’s Smith on the spot reporting via Twitter. He’ll have a dispatch later.Scott: “The American people are going to give a complete butt kicking to the Democrats this November. But after we win, then what?”— David Smith (@SmithInAmerica) June 17, 2022
      That’s mild.Scott: The Biden administration has done something new. “They’ve figured out how to merge radical leftwing policies with gross incompetence… We want our freedom back. It’s time to rescue America… It’s time to take this country back.”— David Smith (@SmithInAmerica) June 17, 2022
      At Faith & Freedom Road to Majority conference in Nashville. Senator Rick Scott: The woke left have an agenda to end the American experiment. “They want to replace freedom with control… They’re the modern day version of book burners.”— David Smith (@SmithInAmerica) June 17, 2022
      Rick Scott earlier this week.Smith on Pence:Pence the ‘hero’ who foiled Trump’s plot – could it lead to a 2024 run?Read moreAnd Colbert:Ivanka’s former chief of staff revealed that T**** called his VP Mike Pence “the P word.” pic.twitter.com/6IZ1r0m4EG— The Late Show (@colbertlateshow) June 17, 2022
      It’s been a busy morning in US political news, though not as frenzied as some. There’s more to come and Donald Trump is due to speak at the top of the hour at the extraordinarily-named Faith & Freedom Road to Majority conference in Nashville, Tennessee. A day after he was repeatedly accused of breaking the law from both right and left at the third January 6 hearing into the 2021 insurrection at the US Capitol.Here’s where things stand:
      Joe Biden has cheered the Food and Drug Administration’s decision today to authorize Covid-19 vaccines for children younger than five years old, the last group of Americans that didn’t have access to the jabs.
      The Iowa supreme court issued a ruling that would make it easier for the state to curtail or ban abortion procedures outright, days before the US Supreme Court is set to rule in a pivotal abortion case out of Mississippi that includes a request to overturn Roe v Wade.
      Ex-Trump advisor Peter Navarro pleads not guilty to two charges of contempt of Congress in relation to the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol by extremist supporters of Donald Trump trying, in vain, to prevent the certification of Joe Biden’s election victory.
      The US president gives a rare one-on-one interview, to the Associated Press and talks about the climate crisis, Americans’ low morale in a sea of coronavirus and division, says a recession is not inevitable and, essentially, stakes his presidency on continued support for Ukraine’s against-the-odds resistance to the Russian invasion, warning: “If we let Russia roll and Putin roll, he wouldn’t stop.” More

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      The January 6 hearings aren’t acknowledging the elephant in the room | Thomas Zimmer

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      The January 6 hearings aren’t acknowledging the elephant in the roomThomas ZimmerThe attack on the US Capitol wasn’t the isolated doing of Trump and a few loyalists. Nearly the entire Republican party is now united behind it – and the attack on democracy hasn’t ended The January 6 hearings have been more impressive and more forceful than anyone could have reasonably expected – definitely worthy of the nation’s continued prime-time attention. Yet so far the hearings have been narrowly focused on Donald Trump and the past – rather than the continuing assault on the democratic system that the Republican party has fully embraced.The committee’s core task is to investigate the January 6 attack on the US Capitol and what led to it, of course. But everyone who believes in democracy needs to recognize that, in a very concrete sense, there is a continuing insurrection that far surpasses Trump.Man who attacked Capitol was given tour of building by Republican day before riotRead moreThe committee’s strategy of building its case almost entirely on testimony from Trump people, Republicans, and conservatives, not Democrats, is certainly effective if the goal is to prove the nonpartisan nature of the proceedings. But it runs the risk of letting too many people besides Trump off the hook. The narrative is that there was a “Team Normal” in and around the White House that moved away from Trump as he went increasingly off the rails, isolating him and leaving him with only “Team Crazy” and the likes of an allegedly drunk Rudy Giuliani, a rather unhinged Sidney Powell, and a rightwing lawyer, John Eastman, who seemed entirely willing to invent pseudo-legal reasons to justify a coup attempt.It is important to get insight into these inner dynamics. But the group of people who were deeply complicit in Trump’s machinations is a lot bigger than Team Crazy. A tale that presents not only Mike Pence, but also former attorney general William Barr, Trump’s campaign manager Bill Stepien, and even Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, undoubtedly members of Trump’s innermost circle, as part of Team Good Guys (or at least: Team Normal, Team Reasonable) is problematic. All of them stood with Trump almost to the bitter end and fought long and hard to keep him in charge; Pence undoubtedly played a crucial role in thwarting Trump’s scheme, but none of the others spoke out publicly until, in the case of Barr, they had a revelatory book to promote and were looking for redemption.Most worrisome, to me, is the fact that the “Team Crazy was isolated” narrative doesn’t really capture the danger of the moment. If that had been the case, we wouldn’t be where we are. If anything, Republicans have actually rallied around Team Trump. So far, the villains in the committee’s tale are Trump, a very small number of unhinged people around him, and fascistic militants like the Proud Boys. Even most of the people who stormed the Capitol are presented as deluded, deceived by Trump’s lies into believing the election was stolen and that it was their patriotic duty to fight back.These are all important parts of the puzzle. But the immediate danger to American democracy stems from the fact that the Republican party is justifying all this, remains united behind the man responsible, and, worst of all, actually wants to put him back in power. This is about Trump, but not just about Trump. This is what the Republican party is: the very few voices siding against Trumpism are being shunned and ostracized, and most Republicans are united in their quest to install authoritarian rule by a reactionary minority.And even if conservatives aren’t necessarily on board with all the specifics of Trump’s conspiracy claims, the right in general is united behind the idea that progressives are out to destroy “real” America and must be stopped by whatever means. White conservatives consider themselves the sole proponents of “real America” and therefore entitled to rule, as is the party that focuses almost solely on their interests and sensibilities.This is the basis on which 147 congressional Republicans voted to overturn the election results even after the assault on the Capitol. This is why the Republican party officially defended the violent attack of January 6 as “legitimate political discourse” and lashed out against the few Republicans who publicly dared to object. This is why Republicans are either explicitly running on the big lie or, at the very least, are lending legitimacy to the idea that there was something wrong with the 2020 election.This is, most importantly, the ideology that animates Republicans up and down the country to look at January 6 as what one of the witnesses in the third hearing, conservative Judge J Michael Luttig, rightfully called a “blueprint” in his closing statement: a trial run for the next presidential election in 2024. They are working hard at the state level to get themselves in a position to execute that blueprint more effectively. They have escalated their election subversion efforts into an all-out assault on state election systems. Republican-led state legislatures are re-writing the rules so that they will have more influence on future elections. Local officials who defended the democratic process are being harassed, purged from election commissions, and replaced with loyal Trumpists.And how are the people the hearings present as Team Normal, as standing up to Trump’s coup attempt, dealing with all this? Take Bill Barr: he’s on record saying he would vote for Trump in 2024. In his testimony for the committee as well as in his book, Barr has left no doubt that he believes Trump is either willfully pushing treasonous conspiracy theories or is completely detached from reality – yet Barr is still willing to help put him back in the White House.Barr’s ability to rationalize this astonishing balancing act is the main reason I am skeptical that the hearings, by focusing narrowly on Trump, could succeed at turning Republicans away from him. When confronted with how he could possibly still support another Trump presidency during his book promotion tour earlier this year, Barr replied: “Because I believe that the greatest threat to the country is the progressive agenda being pushed by the Democratic party.” There it is: after everything we have been through, conservatives still see the Democrats (or progressives, or liberals, or the left – they see them as interchangeable) as the biggest threat.This is the perfect encapsulation of the permission structure that governs conservative politics: anything is justified in defense against what they constantly play up as a radically “un-American,” extremist “left” that has supposedly taken over the Democratic party. What could the hearings possibly deliver – considering that much of Trump’s involvement in the insurrection happened out in the open, in plain sight – that the right hasn’t either already mythologized as part of a fully justified struggle to protect “real America” against a fundamentally illegitimate “left,” or, at the very least, is willing to endorse as the lesser evil? If someone is still on Team Trump in June 2022 – and that includes all those who would love to present themselves as “Team Normal” but are willing to put Trump back in power – we should assume they have found an effective way of giving themselves permission to stay on Team Trump no matter what, Bill Barr style, and to side with the radicalizing Republican party against democracy.We need to acknowledge that that’s where Republicans are: they either subscribe to the big lie outright; or they feel queasy about the specifics of the big lie, but consider Democratic governance illegitimate nonetheless; or, at the very least, they think anything is justified to defeat “the left”. The committee needs to communicate this unsettling reality to the American people, because that, in Judge Luttig’s words, is the “clear and present danger to American democracy.” Even if it initially failed, that’s how Trump’s coup attempt might still succeed. In 2020, the historian Heather Cox Richardson published a book on How the South Won the Civil War. It should be required reading for this particular moment in American politics. Richardson argues that while the Confederacy obviously lost the military confrontation, the broader ideology it was built on, the idea that the world works best when it is dominated by wealthy white men, and that only those wealthy white men are therefore entitled to rule, continued to shape the American project, and is still the leading threat to true democracy in this country today. I worry, to build on the title of Richardson’s book, that future historians might have to write about How the Insurrectionists Won the Presidency.
      Thomas Zimmer is a visiting professor at Georgetown University, focused on the history of democracy and its discontents in the United States, and a Guardian US contributing opinion writer
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      Did ‘good’ Republicans save us from the ‘bad’ ones on January 6? I don’t buy it | Moira Donegan

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      Did ‘good’ Republicans save us from the ‘bad’ ones on January 6? I don’t buy itMoira DoneganA person of integrity wouldn’t have found himself in the position that Mike Pence was in on the day of the Capitol attack, because he would have stood up to Trump sooner – or never worked for him in the first place Who is the January 6 committee talking to? Over the past week, the committee has held three public hearings that offer a lucid, convincing and thorough account of Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election and the events leading up to the violent insurrection at the Capitol. The hearings have been choreographed and precise, scripted down to the word, building a clear case that Trump intentionally broke the law in the pursuit of perpetual power. The hearings, compelling as argument and surprisingly successful as television, betray a vision and discipline that is rare in congressional proceedings, and which would have been impossible if it were not for the absence of nearly all Republicans on the panel.Trump brought US ‘dangerously close to catastrophe’, January 6 panel saysRead moreAnd yet, over the course of the committee’s three hearings to date, viewers have heard almost exclusively from Republicans. The public presentation of the committee’s findings relies heavily on videotaped depositions from members of the Trump campaign and the Trump administration. During the hearings’ opening night, last week, we heard from a montage of Trump-world figures, who testified under oath that they knew the 2020 election had been fairly conducted even as Trump told the public that it was stolen. It was two on-the-ground witnesses to the violence, a Capitol police officer and a British documentarian, who spoke about how brutal and chaotic the scene at the Capitol was. When it was the committee’s turn to characterize their findings, it was Liz Cheney – a rightwing ideologue from Wyoming – who did most of the talking.On Tuesday, the committee’s presentation focused on how Trump loyalists searched for evidence of election fraud, with campaign attorneys and justice department staff investigating every implausible account of irregularity that crossed the president’s desk – from fairy tales of a leaking pipe and mysterious suitcases in Atlanta – to darker conspiracies about nefarious functionaries in Philadelphia. These allegations were all investigated with surprising seriousness, and they were all found to be baseless, even by inquisitors who were sympathetic to Trump’s authoritarian cause. Trump and his allies pressed the false fraud claims anyway. Here, too, the committee used only Republicans’ testimony, giving Trump and his insurrectionist faction just enough rope to hang themselves.In the story the January 6 committee is telling about the attempted coup and its violent climax, Republicans are the bad guys and Republicans are also the good guys. The Republicans are the ones who plotted a coup, searched for a legal rationale, invented lies about fraud and wasted taxpayer money investigating them, and then descended on the Capitol in a mob. But it was also Republicans who privately said the election was fair, who told the president the election fraud claims were lies, and who frantically texted the White House as violence erupted and people started getting killed, asking Trump to call the whole thing off.It’s not a plausible story: the idea that the Republican party are both the heroes and the villains of January 6; that their private, whispered discomfort and hasty condemnations of violence should excuse their cooperation and complicity all the way up to 5 January. It’s particularly implausible now, a year and a half after the attack, as Republicans who once distanced themselves from the January 6 mob have moved to embrace it. But that’s the story that the committee is telling.They kept on telling it on Thursday, as they presented extensive and disturbing evidence about the increasingly threatening attempts by Trump and his fringe campaign lawyer, John Eastman, to persuade Pence to refuse to certify the election results. The Committee heard from two rightwing legal experts: Pence’s in-house legal advisor, Greg Jacob, who was with the vice-president at the Capitol on January 6 and counseled him in the weeks proceeding; and the former federal judge John Michael Luttig, a jurist with considerable respect in rightwing legal circles, for whom John Eastman once worked as a clerk.The two men clearly enjoyed hearing themselves talk, and their testimony featured some tedious and indulgent bickering over the supposed “inartfulness” or “perfection” of the 12th amendment’s language. But together, they told a story of an alarming campaign of pressure on the vice-president to either reject electoral votes for Biden outright, or to suspend Congress’ joint session in order to allow time for the votes to be “re-certified” (ie, changed) by state legislatures.It was Eastman who invented this cockamamie scheme, claiming without precedent or any legal support that the vice-president had the authority to change the results of an election unilaterally. The Pence camp searched desperately for some way that the plan could be legal, only to find none. For weeks, Pence and his advisors were caught in a pickle – not wanting to concede the election or disappoint Trump, but also too scared to get implicated in a treasonously hairbrained scheme. The Pence camp told Trump and Eastman that the plan was illegal. According to testimony, so did the White House counsel. So did everyone. At certain points, according to Jacob, both Eastman and Giuliani admitted that the scheme had no legal basis. They kept pushing it anyway.Things escalated. Trump began to make public attacks on Pence on Twitter. The vice-president’s office talked to the Secret Service before January 6, concerned that Trump’s hostility would mean that Pence would need more security. On a phone call the morning of the attack, Trump called Pence a “wimp” and a “pussy.” Members of the White House staff testified that even after Trump had been made aware of violence at the Capitol, he sent out another tweet attacking Pence. This prompted a surge of intensity and passion among the angry crowd, who pushed through into the Capitol building chanting “Hang Mike Pence.” After the crowds had been cleared, as members of Congress filed back into the ransacked Capitol to complete their work, Eastman sent another email: would Pence consider overturning the election now?A person of conscience and integrity would never have found himself in the position that Mike Pence was in on January 6. A man with courage would have stood up to Trump sooner; a man of moral commitment would never have worked for him in the first place. Still, the committee’s argument that Pence did something honorable when he refused to carry through the illegal plan put forth by Eastman might carry some weight, in the sense that Pence was under enormous, life-threatening pressure to do the wrong thing, and he did not. But perhaps this is the real indictment of the American system of government: if we were a functioning democracy, the rule of law wouldn’t be dependent on something so flimsy as Mike Pence’s honor.But as a symbol for a good Republican, Pence hardly seems to fit the image of uprightness and dignity that the committee is trying to assign him. The members of the January 6 committee clearly want to address these “good” Republicans, to show them that their party need not be defined by Trump, to bring them back to the light. But the people they are talking to don’t exist anymore.
      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist
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      Capitol attack prosecutors press January 6 committee for transcripts

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      Capitol attack prosecutors press January 6 committee for transcripts Attorneys general say material is needed for criminal cases but congressional inquiry says it must be left to do its work Tensions between the US justice department and the House of Representatives January 6 select committee have escalated after federal prosecutors complained that their inability to access witness transcripts was hampering criminal investigations into rioters who stormed the Capitol.The complaint that came from the heads of the justice department’s national security and criminal divisions and the US attorney for Washington Matthew Graves showed a likely collision course for the parallel congressional and criminal probes into the Capitol attack.“The interviews the select committee conducted are not just potentially relevant to our overall criminal investigations, but are likely relevant to specific prosecutions,” Graves wrote, alongside assistant attorneys general Kenneth Polite and Matthew Olsen.“The select committee’s failure to grant the department access to these transcripts complicates the department’s ability to investigate and prosecute those who engaged in criminal conduct in relation to the January 6 attack on the Capitol.”01:56Federal prosecutors are seeking all of the select committee’s transcripts as they quietly expand their criminal inquiry into January 6 rally organizers and people in Donald Trump’s orbit, according to a source familiar with the matter and grand jury subpoenas reviewed by the Guardian.The justice department has empaneled one grand jury in Washington to investigate the rally organizers, examining whether any executive or legislative branch officials were involved in trying to criminally obstruct Joe Biden’s congressional certification.Another grand jury also appears to be investigating political operatives and lawyers close to Trump, including the ex-president’s former attorney Rudy Giuliani, over their involvement in a scheme to send fake Trump electors to Congress on January 6.The justice department has also signaled a potential interest in moving more aggressively with Capitol attack related prosecutions. The US attorney general, Merrick Garland, said this week that he and federal prosecutors were closely watching the select committee’s hearings on Capitol Hill.Trump a ‘clear and present danger to US democracy’, conservative judge warnsRead moreBut the panel has been reluctant to work with the justice department, in part because of fears that they lose control over their work product once they release the transcripts or that prosecutors might misinterpret their evidence, according to a source close to the inquiry.The chairman of the select committee, Bennie Thompson, said on Thursday that the panel would eventually cooperate with the justice department but the panel was “not going to stop what we are doing to share the information that we’ve gotten … We have to do our work.”The public repudiation by top justice department officials – the letter came during the panel’s third hearing into the Capitol attack – marks the latest point in steadily worsening relations ahead of looming trial dates for members of the far-right Proud Boys group on seditious conspiracy charges.Federal prosecutors said they were seeking witness transcripts as part of their preparations for an expected trial in September of five top Proud Boys members charged with seditious conspiracy and obstructing an official proceeding on January 6.The justice department’s complaint was included in a court filing as part of prosecutors’ notice to the judge that they agreed with defendants’ request to delay trial because of a lack of access to the panel’s witness transcripts.US district judge Timothy Kelly set a hearing on the matter for next Wednesday after a lawyer for one of the Proud Boys, Ethan Nordean, objected to the trial delay. Kelly gave former Proud Boys leader Henry Tarrio and another defendant until Monday to say whether they also objected to the request.TopicsUS Capitol attackUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      ‘System nearly failed’: US democracy was left hanging by the thread of Pence’s defiance

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      ‘System nearly failed’: US democracy was left hanging by the thread of Pence’s defianceIf the vice-president had acquiesced to Trump’s demand, the country could have plunged into an unprecedented crisis The January 6 select committee showed on Thursday that Mike Pence withstood an intense pressure campaign from Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.Trump’s advisers repeatedly tried to convince Pence to disrupt the congressional certification of Joe Biden’s victory on January 6, even after they themselves acknowledged that there was no constitutional basis for the vice-president to do so.Pence was 40ft from mob on January 6: ‘Vice-president’s life was in danger’Read morePence ultimately refused to interfere with the certification process, despite facing threats to his personal safety from Trump’s supporters who stormed the Capitol. But if Pence had acquiesced to Trump’s demands, the US could have faced an unprecedented constitutional crisis, the committee warned on Thursday.“We’re fortunate for Mr Pence’s courage on January 6,” said Bennie Thompson, the Democratic chair of the committee. “Our democracy came dangerously close to catastrophe.”Thompson’s warning was echoed by Michael Luttig, a retired federal judge who served as an advisor to Pence in the weeks after the 2020 election. Luttig argued that, if Pence had tried to overturn the results of the election, that effort would have threatened the very foundation of American democracy.“That declaration of Donald Trump as the next president would have plunged America into what I believe would have been tantamount to a revolution within a constitutional crisis,” Luttig said.The Trump team’s legal efforts to overturn the election results were spearheaded by conservative lawyer John Eastman, the committee heard Thursday. Eastman tried to convince Pence and his advisors that the vice-president had the authority, under the Electoral Count Act of 1887, to reject the results. Luttig summarily rejected that theory on Thursday, joining a loud chorus of constitutional experts who had already dismissed Eastman’s idea.“There was no basis in the Constitution or laws of the United States, at all, for the theory espoused by Mr Eastman. At all. None,” Luttig said. He added, “I would have laid my body across the road before I would have let the vice-president overturn the 2020 presidential election on the basis of that historical precedent.”According to Pence’s former counsel, Greg Jacob, even Eastman himself acknowledged that such a strategy would not withstand legal scrutiny. Eastman told Jacob that he believed the supreme court would reject the theory in a unanimous vote of 9 to 0.And yet, Trump and his allies continued to pursue their unconstitutional strategy. The committee shared new footage Thursday showing January 6 insurrectionists threatening the vice-president for refusing to block the certification, as rioters chanted, “Hang Mike Pence!”Instead of offering support to his endangered vice-president, Trump escalated his pressure on Pence. At 2.24pm, Trump tweeted, “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our country and our Constitution, giving states a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!”Committee member Pete Aguilar, who took a lead role in questioning Jacob and Luttig at the Thursday hearing, said that immediately after Trump sent his tweet, the crowds in and around the Capitol surged, and Pence was evacuated.“Make no mistake about the fact that the vice-president’s life was in danger,” Aguilar said.In light of the serious threats Pence faced on January 6, many viewers of the hearing marveled at the fact that he ultimately followed through with certifying the election, ensuring the transfer of presidential power.“Had Pence not certified the election, there’d likely be violent protests in the streets,” Alyssa Farah Griffin, Trump’s former communications director, said on Twitter. “Lame duck Trump would undoubtedly try to use the military to quell unrest. You’d have general officers refusing orders. The republic would be in crisis.”Instead, Congress stayed in session until the early hours of 7 January to oversee the counting of electoral college votes and make Biden’s victory official.In the year and a half since the insurrection, lawmakers have taken steps to guarantee that a future vice-president cannot ignore the will of the people. A bipartisan group of senators is working to reform the Electoral Count Act, and they announced last week that they had reached a general agreement on language clarifying the vice-president’s role to be entirely ministerial during the counting of electoral college votes.The alarming testimony from members of Pence’s inner circle underscored the immense importance of those senators’ work, while revealing just how close the US came to an even larger disaster on January 6.Thompson chose to close out the Thursday hearing with a stark warning to the entire country: although the system of American democracy held this time, that does not guarantee it will survive the next threat.“There are some who think the danger has passed, that even though there was violence and a corrupt attempt to overturn the presidential election, the system worked,” Thompson said.“I look at it another way. Our system nearly failed and our democratic foundation destroyed but for people like you.”TopicsJanuary 6 hearingsUS Capitol attackMike PenceDonald TrumpUS politicsanalysisReuse this content More

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      Pence the ‘hero’ who foiled Trump’s plot – could it lead to a 2024 run?

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      Pence the ‘hero’ who foiled Trump’s plot – could it lead to a 2024 run? The former VP rejected the plot to overturn the election – the death knell for Trump and Pence’s marriage of convenienceMike Pence was described as the hero of the hour, the man who stood his ground to Donald Trump’s coup plot and saved America from a violent “revolution”.Pence was 40ft from mob on January 6: ‘vice-president’s life was in danger’Read moreYet among the rows of committee members, witnesses, reporters, congressmen and women and young citizens at Thursday’s January 6 hearing into the attack on the Capitol, the former vice-president was nowhere to be seen. Pence was 500 miles away in Ohio to promote “American energy dominance”.Both events could ultimately lead in the same direction: Pence 2024, a once unlikely presidential campaign illuminating the complexity of his relationship with his former boss, Trump.Pence has dropped numerous clues already, from founding an organisation, Advancing American Freedom, to touring Republican primary battlegrounds. Nothing that the 63-year-old says on the early campaign trail, however, might be as crucial as the near three hours that played out in his absence on Thursday before a TV audience of millions.But the panel came to praise Pence, not to bury him, or to hang him, for that matter – like some of Trump’s insurrectionists wanted. Even while he was taking part in a roundtable discussion in Cincinnati, the ex-vice-president’s ears might have been burning as the congressional committee investigating last year’s deadly assault on the US Capitol cast him as the savior of the republic.They spoke of a man who put his loyalty to country ahead of his loyalty to Trump, a potential selling point to Republican voters who may want to move on from the former president. But the session could also prove a serious liability for Pence with the Trump base, hardening its view of him as a traitor.The third public hearing was about Trump’s attempts to pressure Pence to overturn his 2020 election defeat. It heard how the president was told repeatedly that Pence lacked the constitutional and legal authority to meet his demands.Bennie Thompson, chairman of the committee, began the hearing by observing: “Mike Pence said no. He resisted the pressure. He knew it was illegal. He knew it was wrong. We are fortunate for Mr Pence’s courage on January 6. Our democracy came dangerously close to catastrophe. That courage put him very close to tremendous danger.”The vice-chairwoman, Liz Cheney, a Republican who in theory could run against Pence in 2024, added: “Pence understood that his oath of office was more important than his loyalty to Donald Trump. He did his duty. President Trump unequivocally did not.”The committee heard how Trump latched on to a “nonsensical” plan from a conservative law professor, John Eastman, and launched a public and private pressure campaign on Pence days before he was to preside over the January 6 joint session of Congress to certify Joe Biden’s election victory.Witness Greg Jacob, who was the vice-president’s counsel, testified that Pence refused to yield to it. The former Indiana governor understood the founding fathers did not intend to empower any one person to affect an election result and never wavered from that view.It was the death knell for the Trump and Pence’s marriage of political convenience. The president whined: “I don’t want to be your friend any more if you don’t do this.”And as a giant screen in the cavernous caucus room showed, it lit the fuse for a mob on January 6 to make bellicose declarations such as “Mike Pence has betrayed the United States of America!” The sound of chanting “Hang Mike Pence!” was juxtaposed with the image of a mock gallows against the backdrop of the US Capitol dome.Computer graphics demonstrated how Pence was evacuated from the Senate chamber but was just 40 feet from the mob and in great peril. Jacob recalled: “I can hear the din of the rioters in the building while we moved. I don’t think I was aware they were as close as that.”The committee noted that a confidential informant told the FBI that the far-right group the Proud Boys would have killed Pence if they got the chance. Jacob recalled how Pence declined to leave, insisting that the world must not see the vice-president “fleeing the United States Capitol”.Yet Trump never called to check on his safety. Asked how Pence and his wife Karen reacted to that, Jacob replied simply: “With frustration.”The implication was that Pence bravely alone stood between America and catastrophe. But the praise singing was jarring to critics who wondered why he was far away in Ohio and not here to speak for himself.Michael Beschloss, a presidential historian, tweeted: “Why won’t Pence testify before the January 6 House Committee and tell all of us what really happened?”Pence did, after all, act as Trump’s enabler for the previous four years. As vice-president he gave speech after speech lauding his boss and his policies, betraying no hint of dissent. In one strange example of sycophancy, he even seemed to imitate Trump’s actions in placing a water bottle on the floor.Asha Rangappa, a lawyer, CNN analyst and former FBI special agent, wrote on Twitter: “Pence is not a hero. Pence is a coward. It just so happens that on Jan 6, his fear of displeasing Trump was (fortunately) outweighed by a fear of something else – either being implicated in a failed coup and/or aiding and abetting criminal activity – but he’s still a coward.”Even now, while stating that Trump was “wrong” to seek to overturn the election, Pence also regularly trumpets the achievements of the Trump-Pence administration, pushes rightwing talking points and savages Biden and the “woke” left.A presidential run would presumably try to square the circle by offering a resumption of the “America first” agenda but within recognised constitutional and democratic boundaries. “Look, I’m Donald Trump but without the violence,” as Michael D’Antonio, a Pence biographer, has put it.But Thursday’s hearing might just as easily be the breaking, not the making, of a Pence bid for the White House. His defiance of Trump has now been luminously displayed for a national audience and recorded for posterity. He will not be speaking at this week’s Faith and Freedom Coalition conference in Nashville after being booed last year; Trump is the star turn on Friday.If the Republican party was still “team normal”, Pence would now be strongly placed to make the case that he was a loyal vice-president who showed his independence when it mattered. This week’s primary election results, however, suggest that the party remains “team Maga” and some still believe that Pence should hang.TopicsMike PenceJanuary 6 hearingsUS politicsRepublicansDonald TrumpUS Capitol attacknewsReuse this content More