The 2nd half of the hearing seemed to be much more “here’s a couple poor saps who realized what they did was wrong, they feel bad about it and suffered a few consequences” than it was a revelation of earth-shattering information.
I suspect we might hear a whole lot more about the involvement of Stone and Flynn and Jones in future hearings. Also starting to really wonder how much more the DoJ needs to know before bringing charges against some of the more major players. Only thing I can think of is some fear of only having “minor” charges that don’t get upgraded later on as the seriousness of what they did becomes more apparent and easier to prove.
The closing statements were kind of meh, until one Liz Cheney took the microphone. If next week’s hearing goes through the explicit details of what Trump did and didn’t do on January 6, it could be more explosive than anything we’ve heard to date - and we’ve heard some incredibly explosive stuff in past hearings.
I also missed Cheney’s “one more item.” Holy. Fuck.
They are handling this like a mafia investigation it seems to me. Keep digging, get enough to start proving some perjury and to force people to testify to defend themselves. The more they get, the more the next person ash to tell them and the harder it is to weave the lies in between the truth. Sooner or later someone big is going to get flipped on in a major way. Hopefully they flip on Trump.
Also politically I think it’s tough to prosecute on smaller charges in this case. They need a dagger in Trump’s heart. He needs to be left standing alone while everyone else has flipped. Then he has nowhere to hide.
Some of these people swear an oath to the Constitution, not to the President. As a matter of fact, when push comes to shove everyone knows (was supposed to know) their loyalty is to the Constitution and the American people, not the President.
How anyone could be surprised by any of this, at best you weren’t paying attention, please pay attention (in a nonpartisan manner) in the future. “When someone shows you who they are…”
This is all for nothing, actually worse than nothing, if elected leaders, government employees at the time, and powerful people are not put against the wall or put in jail from this behavior. To put it bluntly, if we as a nation do not punish this behavior now on public display, we condone it.
In the American legal system, we do not punish the wealthy and powerful unless they egregiously harm the wealthy and powerful.
That Bannon clip sounds a lot like an episode of Rachel Maddow from November 1, 2020. Well, without the swearing. Everything he said was laid out by many others in the media in advance of the election.
The Secret Service deleted January 6th text messages after they were requested by oversight officials. Their story is that text messages were lost as a result of a “device-replacement program". Unclear yet if they decided to replace devices so that their texts would not be subject to oversight.
I found this excerpt from your article of particular interest. I’m not a fan of Pence but he did all the right things on Jan 6.
“I’m not getting in the car,” Pence told the Secret Service detail on January 6. “If I get in that vehicle, you guys are taking off.” Had Pence entered the vice presidential limo, he would have been taken to a secure location where he would have been unable to certify the presidential election results, plunging the U.S. into uncharted waters.”