Tag: January 6 Select Committee

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Congress Crime Donald Trump

House January 6 Committee Believes There’s Video Evidence Proving Trump’s Guilt

The House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol has reason to believe there’s video evidence which would prove that former President Donald Trump didn’t want his supporters to vacate the premises and instead expected them to remain until he had been declared the winner of the 2020 election.

The committee has requested from the National Archives all of the video recordings Trump made as the rioting grew more intense, because in some of them Trump didn’t tell the rioters to disperse, but only expressed his love and support for them.

Based on reporting in a new book from ABC News White House correspondent Jon Karl, we know that several versions of Trump’s video message were recorded.

In the book, Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show, Karl writes, according to ABC News:

The former president liked what he saw, boasted about the size of the crowd and argued with aides who wanted him to tell his supporters to stop rioting, according to Karl’s sources.

Two hours after the riot started, Trump finally acquiesced to recording a video statement. In the message posted to Twitter, he asked his supporters to go home but also praised them. “We love you. You are special,” Trump said in the video.

An aide present for the recording said, “Trump had to tape the message several times before they thought he got it right.”

In earlier versions he neglected to tell his supporters to leave the Capitol, according to Karl.

And that, Ryan Goodman of Just Security notes, is why the Select Committee wants to see every version of the video Trump recorded:

That would indeed be evidence of Trump’s guilt. It would prove his intent and that he didn’t want the violence to stop until he got what he wanted; until he could remain as head of state.

Trump filed suit to block the committee from getting any videos. Why would he want to keep that information hidden if he didn’t do anything wrong, as he repeatedly suggests? Because he knows it will prove his culpability and likely send him to prison for decades.

 

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Congress GOP

Matt Gaetz Publicly Humiliates Kevin McCarthy As The GOP Civil War Descends To The Gutter

Though they try to keep their disagreements behind closed doors most of the time, there’s a civil war taking place inside the Republican Party, with once faction representing the pragmatic but conservative view that’s traditional for the GOP and the other eagerly making common cause with domestic terror groups and insisting Donald Trump must be allowed to serve as president for as long as he wants.

In other words, it’s the pre-Trump GOP vs. the Neo-Fascist GOP.

One of the most controversial of the new Republicans is Rep. Matt Gaetz (FL), a man who seems to believe that it’s perfectly acceptable that he dated underage girls and took them across state lines for the purposes of having sex with them. For that, Gaetz is now facing life in prison if he’s indicted and convicted.

But there are also some Republicans who try to walk the line between the old GOP and the new version of the party. People like House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (CA), who spoke with Donald Trump on the day of the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection and is worried details of that call will be provided to the House Select Committee investigating the riots.

Such was the topic for Gaetz on his podcast, Firebrand, and he noted that “McCarthy doesn’t have strong reactions to things. It’s not his style. Following the targeting of our members, he surprised and said this.”:

And yet, Gaetz then took a very real cheap shot at McCarthy:

“That’s some huffing and puffing indeed. No low T (testosterone) today. But how can we trust Kevin McCarthy to go beyond talking tough to Nancy Pelosi when he won’t even stand up to Liz Cheney or Adam Kinzinger? You see, Cheney and Kinzinger sit as Nancy Pelosi appointees on the January 6th committee. They’ve crossed the Rubicon, joined the other side.”

So McCarthy can’t be trusted because he won’t punish Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger? That means there’s a very real war taking place inside the GOP and they’re aiming their guns at each other. It’s a circular firing squad, and that won’t end well for Republicans.

How should we respond to this? We should applaud with glee and hope for more. The sooner the Trump-infested GOP destroys itself, the better for this country.

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Congress Domestic Terrorism Elections

Former FBI Official: Jim Jordan Has Backed Himself Into A Corner With The Jan. 6 Select Committee

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) is one of the most disgusting people to ever serve in Congress, and it now looks like he’s caught in a no-win situation that could leave both him and his idol, former President Donald Trump, facing criminal charges, according to a former top FBI official.

Frank Figliuzzi is the former assistant director for counterintelligence at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and he says things are about to get much worse for Jordan.

Appearing on “Deadline: White House,” Figliuzzi was asked about the fact that Jordan cannot recall how many times he spoke with Trump on the day of the Capitol insurrection. Figliuzzi replied:

“I think we now know why Nancy Pelosi had to reject Jim Jordan. He is a fact witness and he’s going to get a very complicated future ahead of him. Here is why: First, he claims that he can’t remember how many times on Jan. 6th he called the president or what time of day, that’s easily remedied by simply checking your phone log and checking that date. If he can’t do it, the phone company will be more than happy to supply the select committee with that. That’s going to happen eventually. Next, he’s in a trick bag because if he concedes, as has been reported, that he actually called the president and said, ‘stand this crowd down, they’re inside, it is getting violent, you’ve got to stop them,’ that implies, of course, that he believed Trump controlled the crowd and had the ability to stop or start the crowd.”

That, Figliuzzi noted, is a nightmare for Trump, and it also implicates Jordan as part of a larger conspiracy that could result in federal criminal charges:

“It hurts him because if he thinks the people were violent he goes back home to Ohio and his voter base says, wait a minute, those were patriots, those weren’t violent people. So, he can’t win there either. This gets extremely complicated.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtZpBHz_kpA&feature=emb_logo

If we’re lucky, both Jordan and Trump will be destroyed for whatever roles they played in the Jan. 6 riots. And both of them deserve to be charged, tried, and found guilty of sedition and inciting an insurrection. Let the chips fall where they may.