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Capitol Insurrection Congress GOP January 6

Liz Cheney Claps Back At Tom Cotton After He Slams Jan. 6 Hearings – But Admits He Hasn’t Watched Them

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) made Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) look like a complete fool after he criticized the hearings being conducted by the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 Capitol insurrection.

Cotton appeared on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show Monday and slammed the hearings, Mediaite reports:

“It was clear in Nancy Pelosi’s refusal to seat Jim Jordan and Jim Banks as Republican members of that committee, a break with precedent going back to the beginning of the House of Representatives in the 18th Century. And I think what you’ve seen over the last few weeks is why Anglo-American jurisprudence going back centuries has found that adversarial inquiry, cross-examination is the best way to get at the truth.”

Cotton later confessed that he hadn’t actually watched the hearings, but had merely seen “a snippet here or there on the news.”

“I will confess that I did not watch that hearing, and I have not watched any of the hearings, so I’ve not seen any of them out of the context that I see a snippet here or there on the news.”

It’s kind of hard to accurately gauge the fairness or probative value of a congressional hearing if you haven’t seen any of it, and that’s exactly what Cheney reminded Cotton on Twitter, where she absolutely destroyed him:

It should be interesting to see if Cotton attempts a retort to Cheney. If he has even a shred of a brain, he won’t. Then again, he’s already proven that he isn’t exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer.

 

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Capitol Insurrection Congress Donald Trump January 6

Bennie Thompson And Liz Cheney Have A Message For Trump After Steve Bannon’s Conviction

After only three short hours of deliberation, a jury in Washington, D.C. convicted former Trump administration senior political strategist Steve Bannon on two counts of contempt of Congress, according to the Washington Post.

Stephen K. Bannon, the right-wing podcaster and longtime confidante of former president Donald Trump, was convicted Friday of contempt of Congress for his refusal to provide documents or testimony to a House committee probing the Jan. 6, 2021, attack.

Bannon, 68, is the closest person to Trump to be convicted of a crime amid the fallout from the attack on Congress, which occurred as lawmakers met to formally tally the 2020 presidential election result. The contempt case involved legislative efforts to investigate the Jan. 6 violence and what led up to it, however, rather than the actual events of the day.

The trial, which lasted a week and only featured two witnesses, tested a rarely used criminal statute meant to ensure people comply with congressional subpoenas. The verdict, after 2½ hours of jury deliberations, sent a message to other potential committee witnesses, the panel’s chair and vice-chair said in a joint statement.

After the conviction, Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), the Jan. 6 committee’s chairman, and Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), the vice chair, issued a statement that was clearly aimed at failed, one-term, twice-impeached former president Donald Trump:

“The conviction of Steve Bannon is a victory for the rule of law and an important affirmation of the Select Committee’s work. As the prosecutor stated, Steve Bannon ‘chose allegiance to Donald Trump over compliance with the law.’ Just as there must be accountability for all those responsible for the events of January 6th, anyone who obstructs our investigation into these matters should face consequences.  No one is above the law.”

Throughout the committee’s hearings, there have been reminders that no one is above the law, and that includes Trump, who may have had a certainly level of security from prosecution while in office, but no longer enjoys that privilege.

Earlier this week, Attorney General Merrick Garland also seemed to be sending a message to the ex-president when he told reporters:

During a press conference, a visibly animated Garland twice said that “no person” was above the law when pressed specifically about Trump, whom Democrats say incited the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection over his unfounded claims of widespread voter fraud in 2020. Democrats also cite Trump’s larger, months-long campaign to try and reverse his election loss. (Trump insists he did nothing wrong.)

“There is a lot of speculation about what the Justice Department is doing, what’s it not doing, what our theories are and what our theories aren’t, and there will continue to be that speculation. That’s because a central tenant of the way in which the Justice Department investigates and a central tenant of the rule of law is that we do not do our investigations in the public.”

Trump is going to be charged. There’s way too much evidence to give him a free pass.

 

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Capitol Insurrection GOP January 6 Social Media WTF?!

House GOP Tweets And Then Deletes Attack On Jan. 6 Witness Sarah Matthews After Recalling They Recently Hired Her

As former Trump administration staffer Sarah Matthews was still testifying before the House January 6 committee on Thursday evening, the official House Republican Twitter account fired off a nasty attack against her, even though she works for them.

According to HuffPost:

“Just another liar and pawn in Pelosi’s witch-hunt,” the House Republican account tweeted, referring to Sarah Matthews, an aide who was working in the White House during the Jan. 6, 2021, riot.

She is currently the Republican communications director for the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis.

Oops! Nothing quite like slamming one of your own.

It should be noted that during her testimony Thursday, Matthews corroborated what former top aide Cassidy Hutchinson had told the Jan. 6 committee when she appeared last month.

A spokesperson for the House GOP told Politico that the tweet was deleted because, “The tweet was sent out at the staff level and was not authorized or the position of the conference and therefore was deleted.”

The real reason, however, was probably the chiding the GOP received online, including this one from another former member of the Trump administration:

Memo to House GOP: You need to delete your Twitter account and quit lying about how none of you are watching the hearings.

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Capitol Insurrection January 6

The J6 Committee Can Recover The Information In Those Deleted Secret Service Text Messages – Here’s How

Now that the U.S. Secret Service has told the House Select Committee investigating the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol that they are unable to retrieve any text messages sent by agents on Jan. 5 or 6, many are wondering if the House panel will ever be able to obtain any insight into what took place within the Trump inner circle on the day of the riots.

The Washington Post reported earlier this week:

The U.S. Secret Service has determined it has no new texts to provide Congress relevant to its Jan. 6 investigation, and that any other texts its agents exchanged around the time of the 2021 attack on the Capitol were purged, according to a senior official briefed on the matter.

Also, the National Archives on Tuesday sought more information on “the potential unauthorized deletion” of agency text messages. The U.S. government’s chief record-keeper asked the Secret Service to report back to the Archives within 30 days about the deletion of any records, including describing what was purged and the circumstances of how the documentation was lost.

But according to former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner, even though the texts may have been deleted, there’s still a way to get the information contained in them.

Appearing on MSNBC Wednesday evening, Kirschner told host Joy Reid:

“One way you can try to recreate what those text messages said is to put everybody under subpoena. Place them under oath and ask them, for example, when you were in the basement of the Capitol in the loading dock trying to urge the vice president to get into the car and he said what Representative (Jamie) Raskin said were the six most chilling words, ‘I’m not getting in the car,’ what did you communicate to your fellow Secret Service agents? I mean, put them under oath and sweat them.”

Kirschner added that there’s already enough evidence for federal prosecutors to begin investigating what became of the Secret Service texts:

“You know, look, at this point, Joy, let’s call it what it is. They were asked to preserve texts and they deleted them. That, to me, feels like what we call adequate predication, a fancy term for enough evidence to open a criminal probe. If the Secret Service did nothing wrong, then they should welcome an FBI investigation into something that really looks nefarious?”

 

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Capitol Insurrection GOP Whining January 6

GOP Lawmakers Who ‘Cowered’ During Jan. 6 Capitol Siege Will Be ‘Humiliated’ At Tonight’s Hearing: Report

At tonight’s prime time hearing of the January 6 House Select Committee, part of the focus will be on Republican members of Congress who have steadfastly refused to condemn those who stormed the U.S. Capitol but were reportedly terrified as rioters breached security and began wandering the halls of the building.

Rolling Stone reports that there will be plenty of embarrassment for some of ex-president Donald Trump’s most ardent defenders:

The Jan. 6 committee plans to use its Thursday night hearing to call out insurrection-friendly lawmakers who cowered during the Capitol attack but have since downplayed the insurrection’s severity, according to two sources familiar with the committee’s planning.

“They have plans to paint a really striking picture of how some of Trump’s greatest enablers of his coup plot were — no matter what they’re saying today — quaking in their boots and doing everything shy of crying out for their moms,” one source tells Rolling Stone. “If any of [these lawmakers] were capable of shame, they would be humiliated.”

Those likely to hear their names called out tonight include some of the most well-known cheerleaders for the failed, one-term former president:

In the 18 months since the insurrection, Republican lawmakers have tried to whitewash the insurrection through a series of contradictory talking points. Republicans have alternately downplayed the attack by calling it “a peaceful protest,” claimed it was violent but that the violence was carried out solely by nonexistent “antifa” at the Capitol or federal informants, or that Democrats were to blame for failing to adequately defend the Capitol against the protesters they variously claim weren’t violent or a threat.

Republicans like Reps. Matt Gaetz,  Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Paul Gosar have gone so far as to cast alleged rioters held in pretrial detention as unjustly accused political prisoners.

Several of those Republicans also allegedly begged Trump for pardons in the administration’s final days, realizing they might have legal liability for their part in the attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

These are the six pardon-seeking Republicans named by the committee so far:

Tonight’s hearing begins at 8 p.m EST and will be televised.