House January 6 Committee: Introductory Material to the Final Report
[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]
This is a working post and thread dedicated to the introductory material of the final report prepared by the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol.
Under the terms of its authorization, the House January 6 committee’s 18-month investigation into the attack on the U.S. Capitol must culminate in a report, specifically:
… issue a final report to the House containing such findings, conclusions, and recommendations for corrective measures described in subsection (c) as it may deem necessary. …
The report is not yet complete; after it has been submitted the committee will disband within 30 days.
More content will follow here shortly.
~ ~ ~
Please take all unrelated content to one of the most recent threads related to Twitter.
This post is still in progress and may change a bit more today without notice.
Again, only House January 6 Committee-related content in this thread, thank you.
My post title would have been “Ding Dong The Preening Norma Desmond J6 Committee Is Dead.
shocker.
I know you have pilloried the J6 Cmte all along, but shouldn’t Congress conduct some oversight? It’s one of their responsibilities, which is rarely used. Or do you think the Cmte is really not doing oversight?
Do you think the J6 Committee was bad politics? Damaging to the DOJ investigation? Or only in reducing the likelihood of conviction?
Look, you’ve been here long enough with at least 293 comments under your belt. Stop egging on bmaz on this topic because we all know how he feels by now about the House January 6 Committee.
Focus on the introductory content of the committee and not moderators’ opinions.
So true!
You know what happens when you get a critical Maz (silent b) , the desert is full of the remnants of critical maz, don’t go there!
[I’m serious about this: this thread is dedicated, get on topic. I’m going to start deleting comments not on topic and bmaz is not the topic. /~Rayne]
Talking about the worthless and damaging results of the J6 Committee is not “on topic” in a post dedicated to the results of the Committee? Seriously?
Just because I am not willing to blindly suck up to this nonsense does not make it off topic.
Your lips are moving but I can’t hear what you’re saying. Try again later. LOL
From MASH back in the day:
Hawkeye: Frank, when you talk, I can barely see Margaret’s lips move.
You cannot see my lips, that is why I put it in writing.
*biting my tongue so hard right now blood is pooling on the floor*
I will send you some Anbesol (It really does work)!
Preparation H might be more effective for this particular problem. 0_o
Eh, am not going to go there.
Billy Wilder would not tolerate your slights against the illustrious Norma Desmond.
“I AM big . . . it’s the pictures that got small.” So too, the House of Representatives.
“You up there! Why are you so late?” Foreshadowing Bill Holden’s demise.
In all the drama of the ‘get Trump’ committee proceedings, I almost forgot about the congresspeople that got pardoned for Jan 6th involvement. And were in on the plan. I guess that’s just no harm, no foul. Keep on legislating like J6 was just tourists. Mark Meadows was a busy guy. What’s his future?
Was the committee all politics? Just how close were we to ‘Marshall’ law? So many unanswered questions.
Also, if this committee was pointless, then what adjective is appropriate to describe the Benghazi hearings?
“…I almost forgot about the congresspeople that got pardoned for Jan 6th involvement.”
There… weren’t any? I don’t understand this comment.
The entire comment reads like AI wrote it.
The adopted name of Bombay Troubadour is pretty inventive though despite the bad content of the comment.
AI has improved. The human mind has not. It is difficult for AI to reproduce the fuzzy thinking errors characteristic of our wetware. For example, here is what an AI program wrote in response to the prompt, “Briefly discuss the implications of the January 6th committee report.” Note that the system’s knowledge extends only through 2021, so it wrote about the initial report rather than yesterday’s.
With updated knowledge, this thing could write half of the news articles we read & we would scarcely know the difference.
[FYI, edited for clarity – blockquote tags added to offset the AI content. Let’s avoid using AI here, we have enough on our hands dealing directly with humans. /~Rayne]
Sure thing! My goal was simply to illustrate how much more clear AI “seems” vs. the thinking of some humans, even though no thought is involved. Sorry the post got so long.
Meant to say the congressman that ‘sought’ a pardon from DJT, not “got” a pardon. Brooks, Gaetz, Gohmert, Biggs and Perry. Old news, but my comment was trying to be a reference to those complicit but not yet held accountable, and still in office.
(The other words were just random J6 musings on a third glass of Cabernet.).
A couple of preliminaries:
1. The first order of business is to agree on a standard way of referring to pages within the committee’s releases. I don’t think we can make a final determination on this until we see how they package their supporting materials. The good news is that, based on footnotes in this doc, much of the supplementary materials have Bates-style numbers.
2. When appropriate, we can contribute our research to other crowd-sourced efforts. I know Dan Froomkin is looking at this.
I think using the page numbers inside the PDF of the executive summary (“Introductory Materials to the Final Report of the Select Committee”) are most useful here.
Personal beef: The report does not have footnotes, but endnotes. I hate endnotes.
They are better than no notes at all, but they make for frustrating reading. In this report, the first note appears 103 pages after the text it is designed to amplify. Put the references or comments at the bottom of the same page, where it can be much more useful to the reader!
In a book, I keep two bookmarks, so I can flip between the text and endnotes. Here, I’ve opened the report in two different tabs, so I can read the text in one and scan the endnotes in the other.
Now this is interesting.
On page 8, the committee quotes a Trump “Stop the Count!” tweet from Nov 5, the day after the election. The endnote with the reference does not direct readers to Trump’s Twitter feed, but to the Internet Archive of that tweet.
A fast search for “twitter.com/realdonaldtrump” shows that lots, but not all, of the references to Trump’s tweets in the endnotes are from the Internet Archive. Others are from “thetrumparchive.com”, and still other from the Trump twitter feed itself.
Almost as if someone deleted a number of potentially problematic tweets. But the Internet never forgets.
“Almost as if someone deleted a number of potentially problematic tweets”
Or the Committee don’t trust tfg or the present Twitter owner not to do so. Their caution is entirely warranted.
Perfect example of the necessity to archive critical tweets from key persons. Can’t seem to get this through journalists’ heads.
Didn’t these archives become the only sources for Trump tweets after he was banned from Twitter?
Now that my (ahem) good friend Musk has restored Trump’s Twitter account, I understand the former guy’s tweets are again accessible. Its no surprised that the cite checkers didn’t waste time to go back and update the cites to the Twitter evidence.
Very tempted to rewrite this to have footnotes. That’s actually a wicked formatting problem to automate. I’ll resist the urge though. Brain cycles needed elsewhere.
On the other hand, turning them into annotations might be straightforward. Hmm…
Glutton for punishment.
When a PDF can’t offer the same level of functionality as a basic HTML-only website, it’s on the content producers, not the formatting. Endnotes are fine when there’s a hyperlink to the note, and a simple “back” operation to get back to origin. Alas, these content authors (or rather, their staff) did not do their jobs, and thus we have link-free endnote references.
Seriously, that’s an inexcusable error in a lengthy, heavily reference-oriented document like this. Some staffer(s) need to be ushered towards unemployment, guided gracefully there by the footwear-upon-asscheeks mechanism.
In the pdf, they do have links within the notes, however, so I’ll give them that.
When reading this on a computer or tablet, one solution is to open two copies of the report, scrolling through and reading text in the primary copy while the secondary copy is opened to the endnotes, switching back and forth as needed.
The most significant thing I’ve noticed so far is this:
This is crucial because it ties the CNP plotters (represented by Fitton) to the “Stop the Count” tweet by Trump.
From Tom Fitton email to Molly Michael and Dan Scovino on October 31, 2020:
Gee. I can hardly wait to hear what Glenn Kirschner has to say about this.
link to summary report;
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23466412-the-summary-of-the-house-jan-6-panels-report
[FYI – if your comments get caught in moderation, it may help to check for typos. I’ve corrected your username this one time. /~Rayne]
thank you
I have to admit that I kept thinking of bmaz’ attitude while watching the hearing today. Still, it should be a big deal and it should be presented with formality and pomp. This should feel like a weighty decision made only after careful and selfless consideration. I think most Americans can’t even imagine that a judicial temperament is actually a thing that a public servant could actually possess. Certainly we know that, in real life, Liz Cheney is no fan of either democracy or equal treatment under the law.
This should be an enormous story, a cause of nation-wide engagement with what it all means. Yet, a former president receives criminal referrals from a House Committee, with one member being a dyed-in-the-wool Republican authoritarian, and the nation yawns. It’s a sign of how far into infotainment land we’ve drifted, how out of touch we are with the things that affect our lives, that this referral is receiving only scant more attention than the accelerated destruction of the Thwaites glacier going in Antarctica at this very moment. Oh well. I hear it was an absolutely terrific World Cup Final.
Don’t misunderstand me, Rayne. I appreciate your posting this. I’ll read the discussions with great interest.
It’s a problem that an incredibly important investigation and its final outcomes are treated as boring and not worth the energy. The committee tried to be respectful of the public’s time and short attention span in its presentation, but the public has been conditioned to treat this as administrivia.
As if Congress has so frequently found a president merited criminal referral in the nation’s history. *sigh*
Not sure if it’s incredibly boring or just that after a year of this the talk/do ratio is still grossly tilted to talk.
Maybe once actual indictments come down and the people see some movement in the form of arrests and perp-walks they will get interested. From a strictly psychological point of view, nothing has changed. Their short attention spans scan the front page, see that nothing has really happened, and go right back to what they were doing. For them this is another cry of “Wolf-Wolf”.
They are collectively nodding their heads and saying “Referrals? That’s nice, tell me when you actually do something.”
Can’t say that I blame them.
One more person who didn’t pay attention to what was being done when, and assuming the investigation has already been completed.
This is Congress. Their remit is not the same as DOJ. Their do is exactly what they did and are doing.
I will say, though, that your comment reminds us part of the problem with public reception of the committee’s efforts is ignorance, witting and unwitting.
Adults ages 18 to 34, when asked the question, “what’s the difference between ignorance and apathy?” , the majority answered with, “I don’t know” and “I don’t care”.
The committee was aware from the beginning it was going to be fighting off the ‘Marilyn Monroe 6th husband honeymoon syndrome’. “I know what to do, I know how to do it, I just don’t know how to make it fun for you”.
We got a one-sided court trial, when the public wants gladiators in the coliseum. How about that World Cup final?
What I’ve seen in my little world is that people do not want to get their hopes up. And this is a ‘hopes up’ thing. So I see people kind of have a get quiet and wait and see response.
Sure, kind’a like a train of a track going over the cliff and nothing can slow down the train.
Um, what???
Moderators gave me nice warm Christmas hug, deleted my comments on the subject and told me to go sit in the corner.
Appreciate what you all, especially Marcy, do here.
My initial reading of the opening section finds a pretty powerful rhetorical thrust aimed at those who are not necessarily deeply informed but are open to information. The first passages aren’t even from the committee’s work, but consist of testimony by convicted seditionists to the effect that their actions were motivated by the then-president, that they believed his words and acted accordingly. This followed by the fact that many of the key witnesses were officials and aides working closely with the then-president, admitting that they had no evidence to support the lawsuits and incitements they abetted. There is no easy way around those statements for anyone willing to actually think. Is any of it news to people who read this kind of site? Of course not. But I definitely know people who remain unclear as to the events of 1/6, let alone the multifarious schemes leading up to the attempted autocoup.
So, you think trying to reach uninformed schlubs (which is never going to happen to any meaningful degree) is more important than an actual effort to investigate and prosecute by the DOJ? Because this feckless “Committee” has consistently frustrated the latter.
No. I do not. But as you know better than I, the committee has no more power to prosecute than we do. You might as well say, “So you think running an investigative blog is more important than an actual effort to prosecute.” We do what we can – you, Rayne, and Marci do a great deal – but we can only use the powers granted to us under law. I do appreciate the reasons for your dim view of the committee, but not every citizen who remains ill-informed about the details of the attempted autocoup is an ignorant schlub.
No reason, to my mind, why both are not important. I do take offense at calling uninformed people schlubs. Why not just say the uniformed public without the pejorative?
Lol, “that” is your concern? Seriously?
Perhaps we should issue all the Committee members with long, curly, white wigs and solemn black robes? I didn’t see anyone popping champagne or dancing in the aisles!
Though, I definitely would like to know more about Ronna McDaniel being a conspirator involved in the fake electors plot.
Apparently there a ‘shadow committee’ report issued by Gym Jordan and Andy Biggs, et al that will run into hundreds of pages. It will be interesting to see how far these conspirators will go to cover up their actions (the report will allegedly be about the “loss of security’ = ‘Blame Pelosi’) and what evidence they will offer (if any). Keep in mind for this MAGA exercise in futility that they can’t be too detailed which would risk unintended release of their culpability. Being idiots in general, however I would expect some slime will ooze out.
To the surprise of no one, Mike Pence still refuses to consider indictment of Individual-1 even though the incited mob wanted to hang Pence. Apparently he thinks he still has a prayer to become POTUS, but it looks more likely that Pence would be OK with Individual-1 insulting his wife like TFG did to Ted Cruz. That’s the sign of a toady.
OT, I was also interested in the NYT exposure of the freshman Long Island House Rep George Santos for lying about his entire resume (almost). It does make me wonder whether this will affect the GOP majority which was already tenuous and fractious. I doubt he’ll resign (IOKIYAR) but this is pretty serious leverage and I hope some of his voters feel like the idiots they were. One also wonders how long the NYT knew about this (i.e. before 11/8?) before publishing this report.
Strawman arguments are the first refuge (or maybe second after ad hominem) of those lacking facts or logic.
“When neither the law or facts are on your side, pound the table!”
I find it very interesting that the opening to this report is not about testimony of someone speaking to the J6 committee, but the DOJ-instigated testimony of Graydon Stewart from the Stuart Rhodes/Oathkeepers trial. After a page of that, the committee broadens out to other testimony from other trials. Only at the bottom of page 3 does the committee say “The Committee has compiled hundreds of similar statements from participants in the
January 6th attack.”
I read this to mean that the J6 committee is going out of their way to say that they are not challenging and rebuking the DOJ for not digging deep enough or fast enough, but rather to say “we’re here to help.”
The opening grafs link the violent actions of the Oathkeepers and those encouraged/incited by the Oathkeepers to Trump’s incitement, and the following testimony displays the awareness that the perps came to understand what they did was wrong (and may have understood it was wrong but did it anyhow) but they’d felt drawn to do it.
Trump incited their actions, called them to act violently. The writing could have been a bit tighter but it did a decent job.
J6 committee appears to be speaking to bmaz on the top of page 4:
Educating the public matters, and that’s clearly the job of Congress and not DOJ.
And again, this positions the J6 committee working in parallel, not in conflict, with DOJ.
What a self serving pile of shit by the Committee. And, sure, they were so “parallel” that they were more concerned about their moment in the stage light as they effectively fucked over, in about 20 ways. That Committee came in with a ton of prime, and left smelling like complete dogshit. And, no these drama queens will never be talking to me.
Can’t imagine J6 could possibly out-drama-queen you here, ironically after your colleague posting this has explicitly asked for commenters not to make it about you.
It will be interesting to see what SC Smith does with the referrals. So far the narrative is that he’s no-nonsense and inclined to prosecute when ready. If the files produce some solid cases, so much the better. I do feel somewhat better about the odds than when AG Garland would be the sole beneficiary (though AG Garland has not been squeamish either). Let’s also remember the Senate will (perhaps) continue this digging as well.
Eastman apparently made the list of miscreants, and which congresscritters were referred to the totally useless Ethics Committee? AOC stands a better chance of being disciplined than any of these four (?) with the GOP in charge in the House. IIRC the Ethics committee is split 50-50 by design and there is no way the GOP goes after their own party members. Does anyone have the full list of referrals?
Yes, really good point and a necessary one too.
I realize you’re not talking about him, of course, but people like David Brooks for sure.
I love the way right after the election Brooks threw out in a tiny little mea culpa about his idiotic column earlier in the year saying the January 6 Committee had failed before it already began.
To a fair extent Brooks represents the mindset of AG Sulzberger and the top execs at the NY Times. I think they’ve bent their path a bit due to the January 6 Committee.
My best hope is it’s like the nudge NASA wants to give to a life on earth-destroying asteroid in the hopes that its path will change just enough to miss our atmosphere. They’re morons, but maybe this will help avoid the worst.
Nothing all by itself will be sufficient. A lot more needs to happen. But it’s a decent push.
[The following comment is off-topic. If there’s another off-topic comment like this I will delete it. /~Rayne]
While all of this was going on today in the U.S. House, the Pennsylvania House was busy pulling the sneakiest trick. A PA senate bill which started out two years ago as an innocuous amendment about the election of a Lieutenant Governor, quietly gained multiple added provisions seriously limiting the governor’s power and restricting abortion, and, oh yes voter ID. This was passed at literally the 11th hour at the end of session in July, and must be passed again before going on a ballot referendum. If passes there it becomes an amendment without the governor’s input. PA offers no provision for a citizen’s referendum, only this.
Of course it is timed carefully to go on a May ballot for the historically low turnout. PA just flipped its state house to democrat, but two D vacancies developed after the election so the R’s still have a majority of one. They are trying to delay the special elections now so they can push this through before. I am meeting with our state rep tomorrow.
This may all seem off topic, but the point is that people should stop investing so much importance and attention on National issues while state legislatures are stealing the democracy from under our feet.
The U.S. House would not be hurrying to wrap up their investigation now if not for egregious gerrymandering at the state level.
Sounds like they’re following Wisconsin and North Carolina’s playbook.
I watched the whole hearing. Other then Raskin’s referrals, not much new today. I hadn’t seen Hope Hicks interview before, but not much there either. Perhaps seeing through my notions of her (eg. boot licker) it seemed she was being as non-specific as possible, and hiding far more then she was questioned about.
I think the committee did as good a job as possible given the circumstances.
“Expert” CBS panel sliced, diced, measured and opined but AFAIK added nothing to what the panel members said.
Apparently Repubs going to release their “report” shortly, can’t wait for that burst of enlightenment.
Am more then willing to be proven wrong, but my expectations of meaningful outcome are next to nil. Entire right wing media in full force to delegitimize the committee, their work and each and every “witness” that dared say anything truthful. That’s a lot of influence over US public.
I do not think this country can survive not prosecuting Trump and worst offending enablers and co-conspirators. From everything I read, Jack Smith is right person for Special Council. But then, I thought the same about Fitz and a few others over these last 20+ years and the top dogs always seem to walk.
Documenting the atrocities has not become a stepping stone towards justice, rather little more the practice for documenting the next one unfolding before we know what hit us.
Wonder occasionally if Ken Lay still enjoying fruits of his $b grift in Fiji.
(Ken Lay died in 2006 btw)
The only other “new” item aside from the incitement to insurrection referral (not mentioned prior to today) was a snippet of Kellyanne Conway saying (on January 7) that January 6 was a “terrible day” to Trump and him reportedly deflecting from that remark in response to her.
Yah, forgot about Conway.
Rather the public was told that. The day before his assets would have been forfeited.
No autopsy, no record of medical examiner examining his body and writing death certificate.
[The following comment is off-topic. If off-topic comments like this continue I will delete them. /~Rayne]
From Wikipedia, regarding Ken Lay’s autopsy:
Lay died on July 5, 2006, while vacationing in Colorado. The Pitkin County Sheriff’s Department confirmed that officers were called to Lay’s house in Snowmass, Colorado, near Aspen at 1:41 am Mountain Daylight Time. Lay was taken to Aspen Valley Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 3:11 am MDT. The autopsy indicated that he died of a heart attack brought on by coronary artery disease, and found evidence that he had suffered a previous heart attack.[4]
I guess you either believe it or you don’t.
You have to quit peddling conspiracy theories or you don’t. You think Epstein did not suicide? Because there has been no direct evidence his death was not by suicide. And, contrary to popular belief, they are not uncommon in detention facilities. Did Bill and Hillary off their friend Vince Foster? Because there is no competent evidence whatsoever on that either. After all these years, and no compelling evidence that Lay was murdered, you are going to point to that to support other conspiracies? Really? By the way, there was an autopsy on Lay with findings made.
Don’t encourage them, please. They want to rebut whenever you give them an inch.
Then they can go to hell
Bmaz, I assume you meant to respond to me.
As I said, if it is public it came well after (weeks at a minimum) after his death, with all kinds of problems with no documentation in chain of custody of his body after it was collected.
But then, this stuff was only useful then. But the mechanisms… eg. lies/propaganda on massive scale are exactly the same.
I’m not trying to pick a fight, or be an asshole.
But… just this Jan 6 thing (all of it, DOJ, associated election fraud etc etc.) has now consumed US political discourse and news for over 2 years. This in lieu of addressing and taking serious action on a lot of challenges that are spinning out of control.
This is a repeating process, with each successive fraud bigger and more costly to American in everything that matters. Always living in the rear view mirror.
You have eschewed many times your view US justice system works, however messy. I am firmly persuaded by reality I have observed and participated in (water issues) that what you say is just not true. It is working to perpetuate “outs” (eg. avoiding responsibility) for serial defrauding of America so they can keep doing it.
In that regard, its succeeding brilliantly.
You really need to rethink where you are coming from on this. A lot of people here take your ideas/notions on things legal, to heart.
I do not need to “rethink” anything, especially in the face of your legal ignorance and misrepresentation of facts. And if you don’t take what I say and opine on too heart, I really do not give a damn. By the way, what is it I have said that your beautiful mind deems “is just true”?
This has gotten way too personal. If you are not just having a bad day, that’s fine: I won’t comment here anymore.
If you want to clear the air, send me private email after Christmas and we can talk.
Uh, no, I am not going to engage you via private email. You are entitled to your views and I to mine. We shall leave it at that.
Your last sentence seems correct. But your other points need work. Eschew, for example, means the opposite of how you use it. You offer no support for your claims about “no chain of custody.” And yet you expect bmaz to rethink where he’s coming from? Augurs well for popcorn sales.
** OFF-TOPIC COMMENT DELETED BY MOD. /~Rayne **
** OFF-TOPIC COMMENT DELETED BY MOD. /~Rayne **
Thank you, as always, Rayne.
The off-topic aside was both out of bounds in this dedicated thread and unnecessary. Your point could have been made without inserting conspiracy theory.
Totally agree. I think bmaz’ comment was mis-threaded to look like a reply to me instead of jdmackay8. Delete this if necessary.
got it.
Seriously? That is exactly how somewhat competent witnesses are trained and coached by good lawyers to act and respond. Was Hicks given immunity? No? Then she owed nobody anything. Her testimony appeared fine.
Again, seriously? The Committee simply could not have started much earlier in the process and focused on the actual legal issues instead of dumb ass videos? There was just noting else they could have done? They could not have used a broad swath of subpoenas and set about enforcing them aggressively? There was simply nothing else they could have other than screwing the pooch? They simply could not have liaised with DOJ better instead of routinely running to TV cameras day and night to ballow how great they were and how far ahead of DOJ they were; There was simply else they could do?
I could do this all night, but you get the gist I hope.If you want to Stan these quasi legal asshats on the Committee, fine.But don’t roll in here and tell me there was simply nothing else they could have done.
I agree with you on one thing: they should have started much earlier. Like January 7th.
You realize you’re talking about people who were likely still in early PTSD, right? And who had yet to complete their session of Congress before the inauguration? And about people who were still in the earliest stages of accepting they were working alongside likely perps?
We have asked a lot of a bunch of people who were attacked, to conduct a fair and thorough investigation of a scale never undertaken before by Congress in its history.
I agree the psych aspect needs due weight. The choice to get pro help to push their testmony-seeking and its results, into findings, then into digestible public presentations seems pretty reasonable. Most political showboating is not like a team going through an extended and focused season, but the select committee had to do just that. There may or may not be a brass ring to win, but they got it done.
January 7th? They started to respond on January 6th! Ilhan Omar was already drafting articles of impeachment before midnight. And the case was prosecuted before the Senate within a month. How much faster can you get?
I think a big part of the problem was that the Senate, not the House, rushed the second impeachment trial, so that Chris Coons could enjoy his Valentine’s Day weekend. Had the Senate acted more responsibly, not to mention voted in a more mature and less partisan manner, the American public would have been served far better (probably understatement of the decade, but hey).
No, the impeachment timetable is run off of the House and its impeachment managers.
It’s been well-reported that Coons told the House impeachment managers to drop witnesses because, as quoted, “People want to get home for Valentine’s Day.” I suppose were that not true Coons could dispute the quote, but to date he never has.
Somebody senior in the House had to agree with him. Any decision is on them, not Coons.
Beg to differ, in regards the video presentations, and in some degree with the committee’s objective/goal.
One of the primary objectives of the committee considered was/is to inform the public, and we should be appreciative in what was/is a commendable effort on their part.
With much of the public functionally illiterate and many more unable to read beyond an elementary level, video may have been the only viable medium to begin to spark any kind of illumination in said members of the public.
A bare fraction of the public is going to wade through actually reading the reports, references etc, let alone court filings.
Say what you want, it’s uneven to make a claim those videos were not effective messaging.
Yeah, thanks for the advisory.
“Entire right wing media in full force to delegitimize the committee, their work and each and every “witness” that dared say anything truthful. That’s a lot of influence over US public.”
Kipling said it best over 100 years ago. “If you can bear to hear the truths you’ve spoken, twisted by knaves to set a trap for fools”.
Fools in this case being right wing media audiences.
The legislative branch of government did exactly what it had to do, investigate, compile a report, come to unanimous consensus and forever etch trumps name into the bedrock of history as the only president to have four criminal referrals made for crimes against the United States. That is one huge mark in history. Joining his being the only twice impeached president. What a winner! I think the J6 put together a compelling narrative of trumps dereliction of duty. Now the legislative branch did their job let the executive branch complete the job they are doing. Hopefully the DoJ will come to the same conclusion in a court of law. He is a malignant tumor and needs to be forever excised from the body politic.
On p. 9, the committee starts to talk about all the different people telling Trump that the claims of fraud were crap and that he had no chance of winning. The committee cites all kinds of committee interviews and depositions for these people, with one exception: Mike Pence. Pence’s quote comes from an ABC interview with David Muir.
DOJ needs to put him under oath and have him repeat his story.
Will any of the J6 committee “recommendations for corrective measures” (whatever they may be) ever be implemented?
There seems to be no time left in this session of Congress, and next year the Republicans take over the HOR.
I would not bet on many. The House ethics Committee will be under GOP control by the time before anything substantive could be done, and the GOP will crush that. Not sure about bar referrals, but doubt much there either, especially in DC. As to the criminal portion of the referrals, maybe. But that situation is FAR different when there is a defense being made. We’ll see.
I haven’t read the Committee’s recommendations, but the Electoral Reform Act that the House passed but had stalled in the Senate was just added to the Senate’s omnibus spending bill. I would presume that many of the Committee’s recommendations might perhaps be included in that act.
My initial search says there’s not a lot in the summary about acting DOD head Christopher Miller, which seems odd.
Joint Chiefs Chair Milley was clearly the source for a lot of the uncomplimentary things about Miller in husband/wife duo Peter Baker and Susan Glasser’s account of 1/6. I don’t trust Baker and Glasser very far, but if anything I’m guessing they’re downplaying the alarm of career people about Miller pre-January 6 and the evidence they were seeing.
I’ll hold out hope there’s more about Miller and his ghouls like Patel in the end, or else more appears in other sources.
I understand and respect the need for moderators. But if moderators intimidate and berate commenters it’s hard to feel comfortable participating as “non lawyer interested person”
with legitimate thoughts who learns a lot here but doesn’t want to get hammered as an ignoramous.
Rayne,
At the risk of using valuable space & time, I am so grateful for the invaluable info and context you’ve provided in the last weeks.
I’m sorry for the labor intensive moderation you must do. Am sure it is frustrating and wish it wasn’t so. A deep bow to your patience and for holding firm on boundaries – I totally support the deletion of posts when necessary and trust your judgement.
Thank you.
I echo the sentiment of the above comment. Thank you, Rayne.
I do too.
It strikes me that people who are lawyers are not impressed/pissed off by the Committee’s work, viewing it as theatre in the kindest or competition that threatens or stymied or postponed the DOJ’s work. Non-lawyers – myself included – view the Committee’s work as political education that also acknowledges and confirms what we sensed all along, that Trump et al. did break laws and threaten democracy — although this may be an academic’s oversimplification.
I was going to make a similar comment about confirmation, although there were specific actions during the day (Trump wanting to take down the gun detectors, Trump wrestling with drivers) that were eye opening.
I was hoping to see Sen. Mike Lee and Sen. Ron Johnson named for criminal referral for their involvement in the fake slate of electors. Their names are in the Summary, but they were left off any referrals. I echo hopes that the Senate will investigate, but those hopes are dim at best.
While I don’t think the committee hearings were a waste of time, I do think the committee wasted a lot of time repeating itself. I wish the committee had issued more subpoenas and got more people on record looking guilty by disregarding subpoenas or showing up and bleating “fifth, fifth, fifth” over and over again.
So, the entirety of the Jan 6th committee report is about a hack on emptywheel’s take on political life.
I don’t think so.
Marcy, it’s Time to rethink how you want to toss in oppo comments from coworkers.
Your current lighting rod is not working.
I comment with only the best intentions for your continued success.
You know, we can take care of ourselves here and do not need your help in how to think, work or operate this blog. In fact such “help” inhibits such efforts and is counterproductive. Your “assistance” is unwanted. And Marcy’s “coworkers” think for themselves and are not just “oppo”. Thank you for your continued support!
You did see that this is a post by Rayne, not Marcy, right?
I make a note of this almost every damned time I post and still…
-__-
Whoever Hychka is (I simply don’t recall seeing that username before), my guess is that the distinction between you, Rayne, and the person Hychka feels free to address as “Marcy” matters little–obviously not enough to notice a byline.
Though I thoroughly agree with bmaz that the J6 committee was mostly theater (and share his revulsion over the performance art of a ‘criminal referral’ though probably not as deeply as he does), I do think something like this was necessary. The idea that a house of Congress, the intended target, would let this pass without some sort of proceeding is unacceptable. But it should not be construed as a legal proceeding, but a political one – and the ‘criminal referral’ completely blurs the line.
Here on emptywheel we get the story with detail and precision of the kind not many can cognitively assemble into a coherent narrative. That is one thing the J6 dog and pony show did well – even my Trumpy friends get it. This was the political dimension that I think needed attention. If they needed a concluding encore, maybe the committee putting their collected evidence (without a ‘criminal referral’) into a USPS box addressed to the DOJ would have sufficed – on camera, of course.
Thanks to the principals of emptywheel we already know more than enough about all of this, including the difficulty of keeping the load-bearing gears of justice lubricated. And we are well advised to pay attention to bmaz’s line in the sand – the gritty work of justice takes place in a gearbox; it does not take place under klieg lights.
Completely fair.
I agree, wasD4v1d. The other value added by the committee’s work (I hope) will be the aggregation of transcripts and whatever real evidence they’ve found, like phone records, into the final written report. I felt that their finding re: “antifa” presence at J6–that in fact there was none–was among the most important things mentioned. But it got passed over in the drama of “history” and the criminal referrals.
I’m eager to see what other nuggets the full report contains.
You mean the same transcripts the Committee has belligerently refused to share from the get go, and inhibiting the DOJ progress all along? Those transcripts?
** REMOVED BY MOD – Blog promotion is not on topic. /~Rayne **
** REMINDER: The topic of this post and thread is the House January 6 Committee and its work. **
No blog whoring here.
What you talking about Willis? Promoting our own blog is NOT the equivalent of you rolling in here out of nowhere to blithely promote yours, which you have repetitively done. Get lost.
LOL!
You can LOL all you want, don’t do it again.
Via @MissTessOwen:
“Amazed that there’s not a single mention of the pipe bombs in all 161 pages of the J6 Select Committee’s exec summary of their findings, or in their final hearing.
Have we all forgotten about the bombs found on J6 – or the fact that the bomb-maker remains at large?”
Fantastic point. Maybe if the Committee could have worked faster and not been so fixated on repetitively preening for cameras, they could have substantively addressed the issue of the pipe bombs.
Or maybe the committee never found evidence linking the bombs or bomb maker to the January 6 insurrection and therefore didn’t report on them.
Perhaps that’s something DOJ will be working on since its purview isn’t the same as the J6 committee.
The other agency from which we should have heard about the bombs is Secret Service and nobody’s asking them to provide a report to the public, either.
Or perhaps the vaunted Committee is just lame shit like I have long noted. Perhaps this is law enforcement and intel centric material of which the high holy Baby Dick Cheney has been working for weeks to keep out of findings and the report. If they didn’t hav e the answers, okay, but ignore it, as they apparently are, is bizarre and lame.
Maybe there is a mention somewhere in whatever self serving garbage they will blithely release tomorrow, or the bulk of their “evidence” which almost certainly will NOT be released to the public tomorrow, and may never be at all. I am not going to engage in further hagiography of these jerks, they do not deserve it. And, no, federal law enforcement agencies do not comment on ongoing investigations, but J6 certainly is willing to trash and destroy them. So, where is the vaunted Committee on this? Enquiring minds want to know.
Perhaps next time you’ll write the post.
I kept waiting for the pipe bombs to come up. At several points, I thought a mention of them was imminent, but it never happened. If the report fails to mention them, even if it’s a thus far stymied investigation, that will be a fatal gap.
Seeing the video of GA mother and daughter election workers testifying was heartbreaking. Seeing the video violence was disturbing. Shows the bond of hate by Trump and his gang. He is an exploiter of humanity.
This was one of the mixed blessings of this committee’s work. It was necessary to show how the conspiracy/ies tried to intimidate poll workers into changing the outcome of the election.
And yet this could have a chilling effect on potential poll workers who may wish to avoid the possibility of harassment.
At the end of this and the next Congress, there must be more protections in place to assure democratic processes run without fear.
Thanks Rayne. I totally agree. Also felt for the Capitol Police who put there lives on the line for the all the members of congress. Members moved to secure location, their staffs hiding and police fighting the vicious followers. Let’s not forget Georgia Rep. Andrew Clyde (R) called it “a normal tourist visit.” Yes, touring terrorists for Trump bonded in the drug of hate.
“a normal tourist visit”
~smh~
I was a poll worker in ’20 and ’22 in a small western county. I would say “a chilling effect” is not a consideration in showing the clip of the effects of service on targeted poll workers. Poll workers need the information for informed consent.
Also, the public needs to understand the situation to change it.
Don’t try to gaslight people here. If your IP address matches your description in your comment, your entire county is less than 5000 people. That’s not even half the maximum permitted in each precinct in my home state Michigan (there are at least 13 precincts in my county based on that standard). Population creates an entirely different risk profile, informed consent or no; in thinly populated areas it’s easy to know voters before they arrive at the polls.
[ADDER: FYI – your reply was deleted because it doesn’t need to public. I also can’t assume community members’ real names from their email addresses because we have a lot of fake names. Whatever the case, what is likely a neighboring county is an example of why for some areas of the country there won’t be the same security concerns as there are in others. /~Rayne]
Because of that video (and other news), I thought hard before volunteering as a poll worker in Southfield, a largely black suburb of Detroit. But they needed workers, and I thought I could do more good there than as a challenger.
It was a good experience, very enlightening. We didn’t have any trouble. Funny incident: when I asked a woman at the door of the gym whether I could help her, she told me her daughter- our precinct chair – had called to ask if she bring over a lipstick, and she asked me to give it to her daughter. When I handed it to the precinct chair, I asked if we should call the Republican challenger over so he could assure himself it was a lipstick and not a flash drive full of votes. We both laughed … but poll workers didn’t have to think about that kind of stuff before.
The utility of a challenger is that they are an outside observer.
When I started my shift at noon in ’20 the box to receive hand delivered mail-in ballots had been “unable to be unlocked” all morning and votes turned away. When I started to phone it in, it was found able to be unlocked.
No provisional ballots were offered all morning because the presiding judge didn’t know how or when to do them.
Asking why a voter was turned away may help it be done by the book.
LOL! Great story.
“Jan. 6 committee has done the nation a huge service. Now Americans must step up.
Anyone who cherishes our democracy should be profoundly grateful for the light the House panel has shed, not just on that stunning day itself but on the lying and scheming that led to the violent storming of the Capitol.” Boston Globe, 12/19/2022
In my opinion, the J6 Committee was both engaging, provocative, and had a profound impact on me.
It was like listening to one of my History Professors in College. It helped better me understand how the events impacted the America of 2020-21 and will be a tremendous resource for those future students who will be analyzing the objective facts — to determine how we reached such a sad state of affairs.
But your history professor cannot fuck up one of the most important prosecutions in American history. Yet you relentlessly seek that.
Let’s be honest.
No magic eight ball exists as to the final outcome.
However, don’t you think your approach is a tad cynical?
The J6 Committee approach was rigorous, convincing and stands on its own merits.
History will be the final judge.
No, I think my approach is consistent with actual accountability and yours is not.
No, I think my approach is closer to obtaining actual criminal “accountability”, which you relentlessly demand; as opposed to the hysteria you relentlessly inject here.
If you don’t have a well-developed level of cynicism, you won’t make it as a lawyer. It’s not a profession for the faint of heart. On the general lawyers’ scale of cynicism, bmaz is pretty middle of the road. I don’t think his would even move the needle in NYC or inside the Beltway.
11:33 AM Robert GABRIEL, [Discount Goebbels] MILLER’s assistant, emails the speechwriting team with the line: “REINSERT THE MIKE PENCE LINES.” [J6Committee]
https://mastodon.social/@emptywheel/109542504814910752
Dec 19, 2022, 17:45
A better link [just learning Mastodon]:
https://mastodon.social/@emptywheel/109542763873660674
Dec 19, 2022, 17:45
This could be inserted into my “America First” compilation here:
https://www.emptywheel.net/2022/12/13/follow-the-money-merrick-garland-told-you-so/#comment-975215
That would put GABRIEL’s message just after TRUMP’s last phone call with PENCE, [“You can either go down in history as a patriot, or you can go down in history as a pussy.”] and just before he leaves the WH for the Rabble Rousing.
harpie, this is one more example of the astonishing work you, Dr. EW and the others here have done putting the puzzle pieces together. And, I might add, *without* a budget allocated by the government.
This is patriotism in action, a redundancy I must indulge in to make the point. Thank you.
Thank YOU, Ginevra! :-)
Marcy connecting TRUMP with “America First”:
AFTER THE NEO-NAZI DEMANDS MORE SUPPORT FROM TRUMP FOR JANUARY 6 DEFENDANTS, TRUMP DELIVERS https://www.emptywheel.net/2022/12/02/after-the-neo-nazi-demands-more-support-from-trump-for-january-6-defendants-trump-delivers/#comment-973269
Also, re: “American Carnage”
A Short History of ‘America First’ The phrase used by President Trump has been linked to anti-Semitism during World War II.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/01/trump-america-first/514037/ [] Krishnadev Calamur JANUARY 21, 2017
The WWII era America First Committee was the most well-known pro-German, anti-US involvement in the European war group in America. Charles Lindbergh was one of its top men…top men. Quite a few of them had fascists leanings. Being racist and vehemently anti-union was also common. There were many such groups, including the American Legion. The current iteration chose its name well, and not by accident.
EOH: The current iteration chose its name well, and not by accident.
I Agree.
I found Representative Jamie Raskin to be the most clear spoken and persuasive of anyone on the committee.
While some may have a justifiable beef with the committee not turning over all records to DOJ until the committee adjourned, their sincere attempt to present the facts to the public was as effective a process as any the committee could manage.
We gained a better understanding that the Jan 6 insurrection was a last ditch attempt by Trump to hold on to the presidency. They proved the former president denied aid to the Capitol while it was under siege with both Houses and the VP present; and legislators were literally chased out of their chambers by a violent mob of Trump supporters who he ordered to march on the Capitol and he knew were armed and dangerous.
We also learned Jan 6 violence wasn’t a one-day deal and the “stop the steal” effort involved a lot of people, including a Supreme Court Justice’s wife Ginni Thomas, his former clerk John Eastman, a red-pilled US Army General Michael Flynn, and many sitting members of Congress like Jim Jordan and Ted Cruz, along with others like Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and a gaggle of other attorneys and quasi advisors and hangers on.
The Jan 6 Committee showed us that Republican attempts to sweep the incident under the rug would have profound impact on our democracy and why voting for election deniers in 2022 would be bad for the country.
There are divergent interests between securing evidence for court cases and presenting evidence to the public. So it’s understandable that there be frustration neither got everything they wanted.
Invalidation continues. And is devastating. It makes the American people question whether a democracy can stand. Whether democracy is weak with all its qualifications and tip toeing. Whether democracy can beat corruption when there is no power linked to truth. This line of thinking lends itself to power and control. And makes ignorant people long for power. And easy to manipulate toward fascism. Power is craved. And for all practical purposes we barely have enough power to maintain a fair vote. (Gerrymandering)
Democracy feels weak and ineffectual. Too slow. Too qualified. Against fascism which is absolute. Immediate. Fearless. And a little insane.
Honestly Russia, China, and Saudi have done a pretty good job of undermining our constitution with disinformation and thought bots. . There is a kernel of truth in the idea that America is powerless against disinformation. (Without a powerful effective education system) We the American people who bore witness to the genocide of the indigenous people, slavery to increase profits and make life easy, Nagasaki, Hiroshima, we need power. We were raised on it. We respect it. Why? Cause we were controlled and traumatized by it.
He has been voted out-the power of democracy. It looks like weak sauce compared to the damage that trump caused for 4 years by opening his mouth and simply insulting our values. He’s still trying to over power the nation. He will not succeed, but the next fascist might.
Worse yet, the truth has no power for the American people. It’s not setting us free. We are still under the control of propaganda and fascism as Republican leadership begins to slowly move to De Santis.
The good guys need a show of power wrapped in truth. It has to become shameful to be Republican. I know I speak against power and control. I believe in the dialectic. We need power wrapped in Truth. The American people need to feel power over the corruption. As long as there are no consequences, we feel weak to end the power of the GOP. We won the battle but are losing the war with fascism. As long as we cannot validate the damage we will doubt the damage.
Until that happens we are adrift and at a high risk of choosing authoritarianism because democracy appears weak when compared to the mob. How else to explain that a criminal gop lead congress was given power by the vote.
The truth is we are hanging on. And have asserted more anti fascist energy over the last year. But we came way too close to losing it and the battle is gearing up not down. De Santis looks insane to me but he looks powerful to the fascists. But we still don’t have the full truth. We need the whole truth to have full power again. Until then democracy will be limping through the next few years. And it scares the hell out of me that we cannot get 30% of our nation to validate the damage behind the behaviors of people like trump and De Santis. It’s not about their politics. It’s about a complete lack of ethics masquerading as power.
quote— Until that happens we are adrift and at a high risk of choosing authoritarianism because democracy appears weak when compared to the mob. How else to explain that a criminal gop lead congress was given power by the vote.—unquote
Perhaps, the power of plutocracy and allies by force of its useful idiots.
I’ve read that DOJ is getting the committee’s records for Smith’s investigation – they started handing them over last week.
Golly, how freaking timely!
This is going in the Pre 2020 TL:
via: Brandi Buchman:
While advising Trump on judges, Conway sold her business to a firm with ties to judicial activist Leonard Leo The move adds to a growing picture of how groups associated with Leo helped advance the conservative legal agenda. https://www.politico.com/news/2022/12/20/trump-conway-leonard-leo-00074690 HEIDI PRZYBYLA 12/20/2022 04:30 AM EST
I tell people all the time, ‘Don’t be fooled, because I am a man by day.’
Kellyanne Conway
Via Jane Mayer, re: Ginni [SCOTUS Spouse] THOMAS:
[Riggleman was on the Committee Staff]
[Internet Archive: The capture will start in ~2 hours, 21 minutes, 2 seconds because we are doing too many captures of twitter.com right now.]
https://twitter.com/RepRiggleman/status/1605222456158986248
10:23 AM · Dec 20, 2022 [Former VA Rep, USAF Intel, NSA, Data hawk]
https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1605294103641567232
3:08 PM · Dec 20, 2022
https://twitter.com/JaneMayerNYer/status/1605320136789225472
4:52 PM · Dec 20, 2022
It needs to be systemic, not individual or punitive. It needs to be annual and complete, with teeth for non-compliance.
Disclosure should apply to quite a large group of public employees. Lobbyists are too inventive to allow them to roam the field without a referee holding more than a whistle.
That reads like a threat — like, “If you don’t release the transcript, I will.” It’s Riggleman who’s been a source on J6 committee content, like Meadow’s comms TPM obtained, so they know he’ll do it.
I thought so too. :-)
Here it is:
https://web.archive.org/web/20221221185843/https://twitter.com/JaneMayerNYer/status/1605320136789225472
Trump Paid $1.1 Million in Taxes During Presidency, but $0 in 2020, Report Shows The former president reported a burst of income after entering the Oval Office, but by the end of his term, his tax filings had reverted to large losses, according to data released by a House panel. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/21/us/politics/trump-taxes-income.html
Mike McIntire, Russ Buettner and Susanne Craig Dec. 21, 2022 Updated 8:30 a.m. ET
[THANK YOU, Rayne!]
Informant warned FBI weeks before Jan. 6 that the far-right saw Trump tweet as ‘a call to arms’ The email, which has not previously been made public, adds to the mounting evidence that the FBI had intelligence warnings that Jan. 6 was a major threat. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/informant-warned-fbi-weeks-jan-6-far-right-saw-trump-tweet-call-arms-rcna62683
Ryan J. Reilly Dec. 21, 2022, 9:37 AM EST
Trump Paid $1.1 Million in Taxes During Presidency, but $0 in 2020, Report Shows The former president reported a burst of income after entering the Oval Office, but by the end of his term, his tax filings had reverted to large losses, according to data released by a House panel. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/21/us/politics/trump-taxes-income.html Mike McIntire, Russ Buettner and Susanne Craig Dec. 21, 2022 Updated 8:30 a.m. ET
Not much for a billionaire over four years, but probably more than quite a few top corporations paid. Some of that is the corrupt largesse Congress and the states hand out in their corporate-friendly tax legislation. In Trump’s case, though, the odds that he committed tax fraud seem high.
I agree but what an understatement.
Here is an escape artist fraudster from the Northeast, who will spend over four years in prison.
“In May 2020 David Staveley was charged in the District Court of Rhode Island for conspiring to commit bank fraud after he and an accomplice, David Butziger, applied for $543,959 from a Covid-19 relief initiative to cover four businesses that were either already closed or unincorporated. Three weeks later Staveley escaped home detention, sent bogus suicide notes to his family and friends, and abandoned his car and wallet near the Massachusetts coast. A two-month manhunt ensued. By the time a tip led law enforcement to apprehend Staveley in Georgia, he had used fake IDs, stolen license plates, and changed his phone numbers at least five times. On October 7, 2021, Staveley was sentenced to fifty-six months in prison, followed by five years of supervised release” reported from the the New York Times and Lapham’s Quarterly