Amid Claims of Witness Tampering, Revisiting Peter Navarro’s Alleged Contempt
Last week, Steve Bannon engaged in a stunt, claiming that a Carl Nichols order requiring DOJ to provide official documents on things like executive privilege and testimonial immunity must cover DOJ’s declination decision with respect to Mark Meadows and Dan Scavino.
The stunt itself isn’t all that interesting.
Bannon claimed that he refused to testify in part on the same basis that Mark Meadows and Dan Scavino did, and so understanding how DOJ had distinguished them (whose prosecution DOJ declined) from him (who got charged) would reflect official policy.
The letters Trump lawyer Justin Clark sent to Meadows and Scavino made one difference clear, however (which the Bannon filing obliquely acknowledges). In instructing Meadows and Scavino to refuse to testify to the January 6 Committee as much as possible, Clark included language invoking testimonial immunity, on top of Executive Privilege.
Furthermore, President Trump believes that Mr. Meadows is immune from compelled congressional testimony on matters related to his official responsibilities. See Testimonial Immunity Before Congress of the Former Counsel to the President, [citing the Don McGahn OLC opinion]
The letter that Clark sent Bannon on the same day, October 6, had no such language on testimony immunity.
Indeed, after Robert Costello kept making claims about Trump instructing Bannon not to testify, Clark emailed him twice more, the first time to resend the same letter, and the second time to explicitly say that they didn’t think Bannon had testimonial immunity.
In light of press reports regarding your client I wanted to reach out. Just to reiterate, our letter referenced below didn’t indicate that we believe there is immunity from testimony for your client. As I indicated to you the other day, we don’t believe there is. Now, you may have made a different determination. That is entirely your call. But as I also indicated the other day other avenues to invoke the privilege — if you believe it to be appropriate — exist and are your responsibility.
Effectively, Trump’s team told Bannon to stall, but gave him no legal tools to do so. Bannon didn’t entirely ignore testimonial immunity. In a footnote, he accused Carl Nichols of misapplying the law with respect to immunity and privilege.
Finally, on this question, the Court’s oral Order of June 15, 2022, appears to indicate a view by the Court that Justin Clark’s view on the question of “immunity” is either relevant or somehow undercuts the invocation of executive privilege. It certainly is not relevant – immunity, unlike, executive privilege is not a legal concept for the President to invoke or confer and his view on “immunity” is of no consequence at all on the question of whether executive privilege was invoked. It was.
But he said the common invocation of Executive Privilege was itself enough to merit a more formal comparison (ignoring, of course, that Meadows provided some materials to the Committee that did not involve the President, whereas Bannon withheld even his public podcasts).
Though some of the news reports he cites name Peter Navarro, Bannon doesn’t invoke his case. In Navarro’s now-withdrawn lawsuit against the Committee, he invoked both testimonial immunity and Executive Privilege. But he cites no letter from Trump; instead, he relies on the same Don McGahn OLC opinion Bannon invoked in his filing. Of course, by the time Navarro was subpoenaed — February 9, as compared to the September 23 subpoenas for Bannon, Meadows, and Scavino (as well as Kash Patel) — SCOTUS had already ruled against Trump’s privilege claim.
So it may be that DOJ’s decision tree regarding charges looks like this:
Bannon’s filing may be a stunt, but he may be right that DOJ didn’t charge Meadows and Scavino because they could claim to have been covered by both Executive Privilege and testimonial immunity (and in Meadows’ case, even attempted to comply with non-privileged materials).
Given the evidence in Tuesday’s hearing that Trump and his associates continued to try to influence Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony at least through March 7, I want to return to something I noted before: because Navarro didn’t lawyer up, whatever communications he exchanged with Trump’s lawyers would not be privileged.
After Bannon got indicted for contempt, DOJ obtained the call records for his lawyer, Robert Costello’s, communications going all the way back to when Costello’s previous representation of Bannon ended. If they did that with Navarro, they could get more than the call records, though.
Whatever else DOJ did with their charging decision, they also allowed themselves the greatest visibility into ongoing obstruction, while sustaining the case in chief.
Can you imagine the messaging Pat Cipollone is dealing with right now?
Especially since “Patsy Bologna” and “Pat’s Abalone” have been trending on Twitter. The spin meisters are working overtime.
In case people are unclear, those are mistranslations in the close-captions. I saw “Pat’s Abalone” when watching PBS.
[Welcome to emptywheel. Please use a more differentiated username when you comment next as we have several community members named “Steve,” “Steven,” and “Stephen.” Thanks. /~Rayne]
It was Patsy Baloney. I will never stop laughing.
https://twitter.com/lawindsor/status/1542148871249330177?s=20&t=26MOac1tiZX6cSCH8KRbFw
I think that may violate the molluskuments clause.
Clam up.
Mussel doff.
Uhhhhhhh to both of you.
At the monastery I got lost in the cl-oysters and couldn’t find ta-barnacles.
Everyone should clam up about Bannon’s shell game!
“There goes a dog-fish
Chased by a cat-fish”…https://youtu.be/kVd7803CR_U
Until you finally had to limpet back to your S-Cargo?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_S-Cargo
Touché!
(Oh now we’re back to fencing?)
https://youtu.be/2bQMjmVmkF4
Oh, have merci on me!
Ugh, toucan play this game.
She sells seashells on the seashore of Seychelles
(and she overheard Erik Prince chatting with some Russian dude)
Does he have immunity? it seems like he works for the people, not trump. We wen’t through all this with McGann
You may be confusing executive privilege with immunity.
Biden is the current executive and can waive privilege; he has so far in the public’s interest. Trump can try to claim executive privilege but now we’re in Nixon v. USA territory where unanimous SCOTUS decision said the executive’s privilege isn’t absolute and unqualified, recognizing a crime-fraud exception.
ADDER: nuts, fat fingered my keyboard twice and cut off my reply. I meant to continue that we haven’t seen Cipollone’s response yet to the J6 Committee’s subpoena so we don’t know if he’ll try to claim the same testimonial immunity under “Testimonial immunity before Congress of the former counsel to the president 43 Op O.L.C. May 20, 2019” but it’ll go to court the same way Nixon’s refusal to turn over his tapes went to court.
Could this go to SCOTUS who revisit and agree with Nixon v. USA? Maybe, maybe not given what they’ve done to precedent. But it may stop with Cipollone who knew there was criminal exposure per Hutchinson’s testimony.
“Testimonial immunity” is a whack theory that OLC expanded under Trump holding that top officials could just tell Congress to fuck off. It’s different than “immunity” meaning you can testify and not get charged.
I was reading that McGahn wrote that particular OLC memo which makes it doubly suspicious. OLC is not an independent arbiter when it comes to Presidential topics.
In Italian, “cipolla” is an onion and “cipollone” is a big one.
Wal-Mart is having a run on burner phones in the DC area.
Might be a shortage of burners in a lot of places after Dobbs; the shortage may have less to do with the insurrectionists’ ongoing communications.
As an aside, the Secret Service name for Trump, Mogul, is annoying. Laundryman would be more apt.
LOL I think a lump on a ski run around or over which skiers must manage their course is wholly appropriate.
Hi Rayne–
I always look forward to your posts, but I wish you would sometimes tell us how you really feel.
Yeah, I hate it when I have to restrain myself so fucking much; I don’t want to set off my growly partner-in-(im)moderation. ~sigh~
Nice to see you here at emptywheel!
I am a cactus, whadda ya want?
A pear, prickly. LOL
Nah, a cholla for sure
Don’t touch!
[FYI, your link didn’t work, may have had too much tracking+ID requests in it. I’ve taken the liberty of substituting an image of a cholla; yes, there is a certain resemblance. /~Rayne]
That would be a teddy bear cholla, all warm and cuddly, even supplying its own light, perfect!
Would like to note that the bio has always been a stately saguaro.
So Rayne, the question of the day is “Are you a vampire” ? I just googled your name because I realized I had never done it before.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rayne_(BloodRayne) Really ??
LOL only half. In other words, I’m still hapa.
Well the Maga crowd in Michigan better watch out is all I can say.
I wouldn’t bite any of those bitter assholes if I was starving. Nasty toxic wretches, who knows where they’ve been? Even dhampir have limits. LOL
Or, ‘butt boil’ because pilonidal cyst is too long.
Detail leader Deke whispers into his mic, “‘Butt Boil’ is on the move. I repeat, ‘Butt Boil’ is on the move.”
*Secret Service detail team breaks up laughing*
“Carbuncle” when in polite company…?
A “carb uncle.” Accurate. LOL
Mary might agree.
Or a huffy-puffy steam engine that periodically explodes in flames and noxious gasses:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2-6-0
He’s Wimpy/
So, if Jeffrey Clark had become AG, would his code name have been:
“Mo’-gulag”
Mo’-gulag…there’s some sort of Tolkienesque gathering-darkness allegory somewhere in that. Or perhaps it’s the name of the chief Orc legal advisor.
That’s some filing. I’m pretty sure there are more lines of text in the footnotes than in the body of the filing.
A feeling of social vertigo is settling in. The scripts we use to make sense of of the world do not apply to any of this.
Doug Jones for Attorney General
Why? Do you think he is just a knee jerk indicter as opposed to actually doing things the right way?
That is never how an AG or DOJ should work. Never.
It rubs the lotion on its skin
BMAZ,
Some days I think you live in Sleepy Hollow.
To use a baseball analogy, Jones knows where the strike zone is.
The DOJ is in scoring position.
There is no wisdom in insecurity, or as one may say, “they can only hang you once”
If you think it is knee jerk reaction, it’s been 543 days since opening day January 6, 2021.
Garland should pull the trigger against the forces of darkness before the 2022 World Series.
The number of days is completely irrelevant. The criminal justice system is not about your time frames or foaming desire for a politically timed (or baseball timed) prosecution. If and when DOJ has enough admissible evidence to be convinced they can convict beyond a reasonable doubt, and they think they should indict, they will. You and everybody else screaming to indict yesterday ought to be glad they are doing this professionally and appropriately. And you should be furious at the preening asses on the 1/6 Committee for hindering the effort so they can get ratings for their two hour infomercials. And, by the way, very little of their staged shows constitutes admissible evidence.
It’s maddening, this constant drumbeat of “Garland must”, “The evidence is there”.
Any honest and upright person at DOJ is surely appalled by the behavior of the previous resident of the White House; but emotions aren’t a factor when/if compiling evidence for a case without precedent.
The job is to present a case that, “beyond a reasonable doubt” proves criminality.
That takes time.
Bmaz, you are not “abalone” in your view~
Okay but can I call Merrick “The Human Rain Delay” Sorry, Mike Hargraves🤗
What the Department of Justice does is political. What is doesn’t do is also political. There has to be a much greater disparity in the treatment of the conspirators now cooperating and those conspirators still stonewalling the multiple investigations. There has to be substantially more pressure to create some witnesses that are compelled to do what John Dean and Chuck Colson were forced to do. And the Watergate prosecutors did lose some cases. That is part of the risk. But the risk has to be engaged.
The attorneys are the soft targets. Jurors are likely to use the attorneys as patsies for the crimes of their clients.
I dunno about that. Been around a long time, and rarely seen line level career prosecutors be overly political. But for significant and public cases, they do have to run their cases and decisions up through leadership, whether in US Atty Offices and/or DOJ Main. Does that make any final decision inherently political? I am not sure it does, but can see how someone could argue that. But such is simply how federal government functions.
While bmaz has often and eloquently attempted to explain the misconceptions about how fast this should be happening, here are some non-judiciary reasons Bay State Librul shouldn’t even think about the idea of “Rain Delay” Garland.
It’s amazing almost nobody even thinks about the organizational (and thus info and data related) challenge involved. How long would it take you, BSL, to organize 100,000 documents? That’s just the estimated number of docs, NOT pages, the J6 committee was wrangling — as of April. Even if you knew what you were going to do and how to do it, and had several hundred helpers?
Now, let’s think about what the Justice Dept. has accomplished in a year and a half…just in terms of data flow and interfacing with other government systems, some of which we know are outdated and can’t communicate with each other.
How many pieces of info (data fields) are associated with each POI, suspect, chargee, and several other types of people? How many other systems — people and data — have to be queried, updated, checked?
Add in multiple levels of human interaction — assignment, review, referral, decisions and more.
To have processed through almost 1000 charged defendants already, and an unknown number of people still in disposition and another unknown number processed out as no-charge or otherwise put aside, seems like really efficient work.
Another way to look at it: how many people hours does it take to effect a resolution (charge or not) for each potential J6 defendant? Thankfully, we still don’t have assembly line justice here.
We had to sort 18 four-drawer file cabinets full of papers at work. It took 70 people (including the manager and his secretary, plus all of us and our supervisors) a full week, 68 hours, to do it. That was with nothing else going on, and a plan already set up for handling them.
With 8-hour days, it took several months to sort a million pieces of paper (different set of papers, same kind of stuff), and they actually set up a separate work group to hand it, of smaller size.
Those are great real world examples…almost. 5000 people hours for 72 file drawers, wow.
I wonder how many file drawers it would take to hold 100,000 documents.
While the DOJ already had the systems, procedures, and workflows, we don’t know how functional these were after four years of “only the best people” running normal operations — at the least ineptly. We don’t know what kind of percentage increase in work it all represents, either…10 per cent? 20? More?
(This is the same DOJ with the FBI computer system that was decades obsolete and over several administrations replacing it slipped years behind schedule).
Sorry for phone-induced editing mistakes.
https://forums.talkingpointsmemo.com/t/reports-hutchinson-received-warning-calls-trying-to-pressure-her-before-testimony/226300
From a comment on this TPM thread:
As they say in Scotland…
“Ooouch’mon…”
Yeah, that one leaves a mark. For anyone who did not click on it here it is:
“How long would it take you, BSL, to organize 100,000 documents?” — Many moons, I’m
organizationally challenged. I bet McKinsey & Company can give you a better idea.
My bitch is not with the grunts who do the bulk of the work. They work, day after, day, grinding out the workload.
It’s the time spent assessing the risks and difficulties in securing an indictment that nags me.
Southpaw has a wonderful essay titled “What’s Really Stopping a Trump Prosecution.”
We have reached a fork in the road – take it.
Southpaw has never tried a criminal case in his lifetime. So, when Luppe talks about what happens in criminal courtrooms, understand he has no idea. His thoughts are not worth much. But if you have glommed on to his posit from weeks ago because it aligns with your own determination to engage in a politically time framed political prosecution, of the type Trump would have done, keep baying on.
Missing the point that it’s easier for laypeople to grasp the enormity by looking at what’s involved even without adding in the work by lawyers.
The Brits have a great expression to describe successfully handling huge, complicated operations: eating the artichoke leaf by leaf. Often used to indicate what’s happening while people complain about slow progress.
I find it remarkable that people, including some here, who have spent decades baying about “the rule of law” and “law, not men” so easily come forth to demand the exact opposite out of Garland and DOJ as to one man, Trump, than what they supposedly stood for in the first instance.
The problem, as I see it, is that Trump and his minions can try to do illegal dirty tricks on Biden, get caught at it, and then, basically, get away from any legal serious consequences for it while, meanwhile, we have here the DOJ with some pretty clear cut cases of attempts to violates dozens or hundreds of laws on the books by those same minions/Trump and make little if any progress towards holding the accountable under the law. This is the erosion of respect for the law in real time. It’s palpable. And, until the DOJ or some other law enforcement and prosecutorial bodies actually reign in these crimes directly there will really not be any growing faith in the current Constitutional system basically.
No one specific criminal case is about that. Never. Your, and others’, concerns about things are very much not the things of a good prosecution. And the sooner people get away from that, the better.
I don’t find it remarkable. I think it’s an unsurprising human response.
First, because people sometimes have difficulty being in a state of not-knowing — in this case, not knowing whether Garland will eventually charge Trump and if so, for what crimes. It can be especially hard to be in a state of not-knowing with respect to issue Z when someone has knowledge of related issues X and Y and also has related strongly-held opinions (beliefs that are shared or not, as contrasted with T/F beliefs). People know quite a bit about Trump from his public statements and his public actions, people have strong opinions about him, and it’s easy to assume that we know other things when those things are instead either T/F conjectures or more opinions. There’s also relevant knowledge (say, the knowledge of a prosecutor or defense lawyer) that many of us lack and so gloss over, because we don’t even know what it is that we don’t understand
It’s very human to be impatient at times.
Trump’s treatment certainly comes across as double-standards at times (for example, the decision not to charge Trump with a campaign finance crime when Cohen was convicted of one and there are checks literally signed by Trump reimbursing Cohen, and Trump lied about that on his financial disclosure form), which reasonably ticks people off. We see poor people charged for minor crimes all the time, and it can feel like a wealthy, powerful person getting away with things that a poor person would not get away with. And that feeling, too, makes it harder to be patient with not-knowing.
This. Why is okay if you’re the President of the US to get away with stuff like this? It’s a blatant violation of the law. Period.
Seltzer me
I’m sticking with my lefty, his approach is less reductive, and he doesn’t appear to have a Fuck You attitude
I don’t know what people think “prosecuting Trump” would look like. It seems to me it should look like exactly what we’re seeing. If reporting everywhere were as fact-based as here, the whole country would be expecting a Trump indictment on the basis of a relentless and well-conceived investigation instead of bitching about weak Dems. We should be debating when it will happen or if politics will prevent it, not whether Garland” wants to do it. There is little room for educated debate on whether “Garland” is “going after Trump”. The DOJ is obviously pursuing J6 prosecutions. If Trump is involved, the investigation will take them to Trump.
By the way, the willfully ignorant reporting on this issue comes from the same place that has equated believable public testimony under oath with anonymous sources declaring what some people would say if they did something they refuse to do.
Yes!
As counter-intuitive as it might be to some people, the less we hear probably means the more is going on. The DOJ has been remarkably leak- and bitch- free; which wouldn’t be the case if there was disagreement about the end goal or there was political stalling.
If nothing else, reading EW should help one understand that nobody in the media or the commentariat, up to and including EW staff and resident expert commenters, really knows what DOJ is or isn’t doing and is or isn’t thinking. Or if any EW participants do know anything about it, they are rightfully staying mum.
The one thing we do know (in my case, from reading it here) is that keeping potential targets guessing is a routine part of DOJ strategy. Personally, I find the lack of information as stress-inducing and unsatisfying as the next liberal (or “pahgressive”, as we say in my corner of the Bay State), but emotional relief, even for millions, seems like a poor exchange for making DOJ’s job any harder than it already is. I guess this is what that tequila the folks here keep mentioning is about.
The problem is when there is no deterrence being generated by DOJ actions (or inactions). The country just saw a DOJ being weakened for 4 years under Twitler’s regime and until there’s some sort of actual large cleaning out of the corruption from our political system, faith in the DOJ (and other national institutions) will continue to tepid at best.
The trouble is that no actions generate deterrence. If deterrence is ever generated, and their are whole criminology books on that, it is by convictions and sentences. And we have to bear in mind that an initiated action which does not result in a conviction, of any of the top guys let alone Trump, would be the worst of all possible outcomes. But, risking the wrath of bmaz, I think that is a lot of what the 1.6 Committee is about. I think they know precisely how carefully DoJ has to tread so they are getting stuff about the attempted Trump coup out into the public and political sphere at a faster rate than DoJ could ever, or would ever, want to, achieve.
It used to be that being indicted or arrested for a crime was enough to get some politicians to steer clear of falling afoul of the law. Now folks like Trump basically break it at will and little it done. This is a cultural shift and points to how hollow the current system of governance in this country has become.
I’m old enough to remember the government’s anti-trust case against IBM back in the 1970’s. It lasted seven years and generated over 30,000,000 pages of documents, some of which were delivered by IBM in packed railroad cars. Some cases just take more time than others. Lots more.
You’re right, of course, but I can’t help thinking that in that case, just waiting another decade would have rendered the case moot. IBM the giant computer company that nobody can compete with – and Apple the plucky little maker of school machines…
Oddly, IBM was computing for the people. Every single software update, patch, utility, manual, service manual, hardware diagram and much more for every machine, and I mean every machine, back decades was freely available on its site, no registration or proof of ownership required.
Got an Apple ][ while Carter was still president and many since but IBM has treated users known and unknown much better.
FWIW (maybe not much) but as I think about the Trump prosecution question and the exceedingly long timeline thereof, not to mention imponderables like what happens to that process if /when he declares candidacy for 2024 while it’s still ongoing, I am interested in this other possibility, which is that I believe Congress can declare him (or anyone) ineligible to run for public office, not contingent on an actual conviction. There’s certainly enough evidence in the public hearings to justify such a move, whether or not it’s enough to take into a court of law. Might even get some R’s to go along with it, given that a lot of leadership ones seem to be trending toward “Let’s just keep the Trumpism and lose Trump.” Clear the field for DeSantos, for one thing.
With all of the puns on this thread I may change my posting name to Rico Ricardi.
Sorry Mr. Ricardo, but bmaz does not allow the word RICO to be uttered on this site.
#J6TL
Information from HUTCHINSON Hearing
January 6th Committee Sixth Public Hearing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSNBe-Wt6Q4
TRANSCRIPT: https://www.npr.org/2022/06/28/1108396692/jan-6-committee-hearing-transcript
XX/XX/XX – XX/XX/19 CASSIDY HUTCHINSON works for Whip SCALISE and CRUZ
XX/XX/19 – 3/30/20 HUTCHINSON works in WH Legislative Affairs Office
3/31/20 – 1/21/21 HUTCHINSON is principle aide to new TRUMP CoS MEADOWS
12/1/20 TRUMP throws food and dishes at the television when he hears BARR telling AP that DOJ had not found evidence of widespread election fraud sufficient to change the outcome of the election.
12/XX/20 DNI [and former member of Congress] RATCLIFFE tells HUTCHINSON that he was hoping TRUMP would concede; he felt TRUMP’s post election fight “could spiral out of control and potentially be dangerous, either for our democracy or the way that things were going for the 6th.”
1/2/21 [Evening] MEADOWS meets at the WH with GIULIANI and OTHERS. Afterwards, GIULIANI mentions 1/6/21 plans to HUTCHINSON; HUTCHINSON discusses with MEADOWS:
1/3/21 Capitol Police issue a special event assessment: unlike previous post-election protests, the targets of the pro-Trump supporters are not necessarily the counter-protesters as they were previously, but rather Congress itself is the target on the 6th.
1/3/21 CIPOLLONE / HUTCHINSON discuss MEADOWS’ planning to go to Capitol.
CIPOLLONE urges HUTCHINSON to continue to relay to MEADOWS that [per HUTCHINSON] “This would be a legally a terrible idea for us. We’re — we have serious legal concerns if we go up to the Capitol that day.” [] “it’s my understanding that Mr. Cipollone thought that Mr. Meadows was indeed pushing this, along with the president.”
1/4/21 DOJ National Security Division to DONOGHUE, Email
1/4/21[?] USSS Intelligence Division Email & Attachment
1/4/21 HUTCHINSON receives call from NSA O’BRIEN who wants to talk to MEADOWS about “words of violence that he was hearing”. She directs him to ORNATO who had already spoken to MEADOWS about that topic. O’BRIEN spoke with ORNATO but it’s UNKOWN whether he spoke to MEADOWS.
1/5/21 [night] TRUMP instructs MEADOWS to contact STONE and FLYNN re: “what would play out the next day.” MEADOWS contacts both STONE and FLYNN at the WILLARD War Room. MEADOWS had wanted to go there to meet with GIULIANI and his associates, but called in instead.
1/5/21 [evening/night] After the Stop the Steal Rally at Freedom Plaza, DC Police make several arrests for possession of firearms or ammunition.
1/6/21
8:00 AM Hour January 6 USSS Intelligence Report [8 AM hour]
10:00 AM -10:15 AM ORNATO alerts MEADOWS and HUTCHINSON re: reports of weapons found at magnetometers for RALLY. MEADOWS is on his phone, distracted; MEADOWS asks if ORNATO had informed TRUMP, and he says he had.
XX:XX AM CIPOLLONE and HERSHMANN tell MEADOWS [HUTCHINSON] about their legal concerns with “rhetoric” that’s being discussed for TRUMP’s speech
TRUMP had requested something along the lines of “fight for Trump. We’re going to march to the Capitol. I’ll be there with you. Fight for me. Fight for what we’re doing. Fight for the movement. Things about the Vice President at the time too.”
11:00 AM Hour: January 6 USSS Intelligence Report [11 AM hour]
11:30 AM [approx] CIPOLLONE speaks with HUTCHINSON re TRUMP going to the Capitol: “please make sure we don’t go up to the Capitol, Cassidy. Keep in touch with me. We’re going to get charged with every crime imaginable if we make that movement happen.”
[potentially 1 ] obstructing justice or 2] defrauding the electoral count.]
11:55 AM [approx] ; [2 to 3 minutes before TRUMP got on stage] [In tent at Rally]
12:15 PM [approx] In Rally speech, TRUMP says he’s going to the CAPITOL
Between approx 11:45 AM to 1:14 PM [At the ELLIPSE] [TRUMP spoke between 11:57 AM and 1:10 PM]
1:14 PM – 1:20 PM [approx] TRUMP in transit to Oval Office
1:20 PM [approx] ORNATO tells HUTCHINSON about incident in TRUMP’s car; ENGEL is there.
[Soon after] 1:20 PM MCENANY re: TRUMP:
2:00 -2:05 PM HUTCHINSON / MEADOWS conversation
2:15 PM [Approx] CIPOLLONE confronts MEADOWS; they go to TRUMP
2:24 PM TRUMP tweets:
2:15 -2:25 PM JORDAN calls MEADOWS back. HUTCHINSON hands phone to MEADOWS in dining room. MEADOWS, in doorway of dining room, speaks briefly with JORDAN
HUTCHINSON hears “conversations in the Oval Dining Room “talking about the hang Mike Pence chants.” HUTCHINSON returns to her desk “couple of minutes later”.
MEADOWS, CIPOLLONE and [probably] HERSCHMANN come out of the dining room.
2:32 PM INGRAHAM to MEADOWS: hey, Mark, the president needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home. In the next message, this is hurting all of us. [] he’s destroying his legacy and playing into every stereotype. We lose all credibility against the BLM/Antifa crowd if things go south.
2:53 PM JUNIOR DON to MEADOWS he’s got to condemn this shit ASAP. The Capitol Police tweet is not enough.
3:00 PM [approx] MEADOWS is in meeting with HIRSCHMANN and possibly PHILBIN. They rush out of the office and MEADOWS “dictates a statement for the president to potentially put out”. HUTCHINSON writes:
Later that afternoon, MEADOWS returns from the dining room, handed the note card back to HUTCHINSON. The word “illegal” was crossed out. The statement was never issued.
X:XX PM MCCARTHY to Norah O’DONNELL: I completely condemn the violence in the Capitol. What we’re currently watching unfold is un- American. I am — I’m disappointed. I’m sad. This is not what our country should look like. This is not who we are. This is not the First Amendment. This has to stop and this has to stop now
X:XX PM Mike GALLAGHER to TRUMP: Mr. President, you have got to stop this. You are the only person who can call this off. Call it off. The election is over. Call it off. This is bigger than you. It’s bigger than any member of Congress. It is about the United States of America, which is more important than any politician. Call it off. It’s over.
3:31 PM HANNITY to MEADOWS: “Can he make a statement. I saw the tweet. Ask people to leave the [Capitol].”
4:17 PM TRUMP tweets VIDEO.
HUTCHINSON: “I recall him being reluctant to film the video on the 6th”
[1/6/21 cont]
[later that evening] HANNITY sends to MEADOWS the link to a tweet which “reported that that President Trump’s cabinet secretaries were considering invoking the 25th Amendment to remove President Trump from office”
[Yet later that evening] HANNITY speaks with TRUMP.
[On 1/7/21 at 7:37 PM, HANNITY discusses this conversation with MCENANY]:
*************
1/7/21 ADVISORS to TRUMP: make VIDEO/speech: “Remarks on National Healing”;
PHILBIN, CIPOLLONE and HERSCHMANN had agreed to the language, but TRUMP does NOT agree with the substance as drafted and resists giving a speech at all.
TRUMP recites the final draft with only one significant alteration:
TRUMP does NOT say “But this election is now over.”
1/7/21 [evening] HANNITY informs MCENANY of what he discussed with TRUMP in the late evening of 1/6/21 [See above]
The 1/6 call from Hannity to Trump occurred at 11:08pm and lasted for 8 minutes (White House call logs for 1/6).
Thanks, WO! It will be very interesting to fill in the outline from the hearing with information like this!
There are two more comments in this series, but in moderation for now.
[Freed now, thanks. /~Rayne]
Thank YOU so much, RAYNE!
One more piece of information [which Marcy links to in this post [>
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/06/30/jan-6-hutchinson-meadows-mystery-messages-00043638 ]:
3/6/22 HUTCHINSON is contacted by an intermediary for MEADOWS the day before her scheduled deposition with the J6 Committee:
HUTCHINSON had previously received multiple phone calls from TRUMP allies:
From the Politico article:
I guess that’s the same Ben WILLIAMSON that was mentioned in the Hearing:
And this is from Hearing 3 – PENCE PRESSURE
https://www.npr.org/2022/06/16/1105683634/transcript-jan-6-committee
And here’s WILLIAMSON’s deposition transcript, from 1/25/22
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cacd.841840/gov.uscourts.cacd.841840.160.12.pdf
^^^ These are excerpts!
Also:
New Details Suggest Senior Trump Aides Knew Jan. 6 Rally Could Get Chaotic Text messages and interviews show that Stop the Steal leaders fooled the Capitol police and welcomed racists to increase their crowd sizes, while White House officials worked to both contain and appease them.
https://www.propublica.org/article/new-details-suggest-senior-trump-aides-knew-jan-6-rally-could-get-chaotic 6/25/22
And here’s WILLIAMSON’s deposition transcript, from 1/25/22
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cacd.841840/gov.uscourts.cacd.841840.160.12.pdf