Day 9 of January 6 Hearings: WSJ Opines That the Die Is Cast for Trump
Never before-seen video introduced at the October 13 January 6 committee hearing.
If you watched Day 9 of the January 6 Committee hearing it may have taken a while to sort through it all. If you’re like me, you read various recaps and observations, and mulled over the information.
The Wall Street Journal‘s editorial addresses yesterday’s surprise ending of the hearing when all nine members of the committee voted unanimously to subpoena former President Donald Trump.
From the Journal:
Rep. Liz Cheney justified an extraordinary subpoena to a former President by saying that “more than 30 witnesses in our investigation have invoked their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.” They include John Eastman, who told Mr. Trump that Vice President Mike Pence could derail the Electoral College count, as well as Jeffrey Clark, who tried to get the Justice Department to legitimize dubious fraud claims.
White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows has refused to testify. Outside adviser Steve Bannon also refused and was convicted of contempt of Congress, for which he’ll soon be sentenced.
Most agree it will most likely never happen. Delay delay delay is the name of the game. However, something else may have been accomplished, as pointed out by the WSJ.
What the committee has accomplished, however, is to cement the facts surrounding Mr. Trump’s recklessness after Nov. 3 and his dereliction of duty on Jan. 6. The Justice Department and Mr. Trump’s own campaign repeatedly told him that his fraud claims were without basis. Whether it was willful blindness or an intentional strategy, he kept repeating them.
In testimony played Thursday, former White House Communications Director Alyssa Farah Griffin said that about a week after Joe Biden was declared the winner, “I popped into the Oval just to, like, give the President the headlines and see how he was doing, and he was looking at the TV, and he said, ‘Can you believe I lost to this effing guy?’ ” Yet Mr. Trump still pressured Mr. Pence to stop the Electoral College count, while calling for a Jan. 6 rally that he tweeted “will be wild!”
That day he riled up the crowd and urged it to march on the Capitol. Mr. Trump allegedly intended to go there himself, if the Secret Service hadn’t refused. Then he watched the riot on TV. Another striking video Thursday was a question the committee put to his White House counsel, Pat Cipollone: “When you were in the dining room in these discussions, was the violence at the Capitol visible on the screen, on the television?” His reply: “Yes.”
No president in my memory would have reacted to violence at the U.S. Capitol by watching it on TV without stepping in to stop the rioters and protect electeds and staffers in the Capitol.
The editorial concluded, “The Jan. 6 committee probably won’t get Mr. Trump under oath, but the evidence of his bad behavior is now so convincing that political accountability hardly requires it.” [emphasis added]
My hope is my fellow Republicans watched or heard parts of the hearing in the news and will look objectively at the ironclad evidence. To continue to deny that anything happened on January 6, 2021, or refusing to recognize the seriousness of a violent mob made up of the sitting president’s supporters attacking the U.S. Capitol, will further destroy the integrity of the GOP.
