Where Things Now Stand
property, and — but arguing and threatening with neighbors and with myself,” including at least one incident with armed man vocally threatening a neighbor.
As for Georgia, they played tape of Trump’s call to Raffensperger saying, “So, look, all I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have because we won the state.” And Raffensperger testified, “There were no votes to find. That was an accurate count that had been certified.”
The pressure on Raffensperger and Sterling is the subject of a criminal investigation by Fulton County DA Fani Willis, which could lead to state charges against Trump, regardless of any federal charges the Department of Justice might bring.
They also heard riveting testimony from Ruby Freeman and Shay Moss, two Black election workers who Trump repeatedly falsely attacked, and whose lives had been severely disrupted.
The fifth hearing, on June 23, focused on Trump’s far-flung efforts to strong-arm the DOJ into overturning the election, with live testimony from three key figures: Richard Donoghue, former acting U.S. deputy attorney general; Jeff Rosen, former acting attorney general; and Steven A. Engel, former assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel. They all testified that DOJ lawyers repeatedly told Trump he had the facts and the law wrong, but that he repeatedly tried all kinds of nutty gambits, including an effort to install an unqualified lawyer, Jeffrey Clark, to do his bidding. Only the threat of a mass resignation — reminiscent of Richard Nixon’s “Saturday Night Massacre” that turned public opinion against him — stopped Trump from appointing Clark.
The sixth hearing, on June 28, featured testimony from Cassidy Hutchinson, who provided damning evidence that Trump was not only aware of the potential for violence when he riled up his supporters in his public speech to them, but that he also wanted to lead them at the Capitol and physically assaulted his driver when the driver refused to take him there, because of security concerns. Trump knew there were armed crowd members being kept outside of where he was speaking, because they couldn’t pass through the metal detectors (aka “mags”).
“I overheard the president say something to the effect of, you know, I - - I don’t effing care that they have weapons. They’re not here to hurt me,” Hutchinson testified. “Take those effing mags away. Let my people in. They can march to the Capitol from here. Let the people in. Take the effing mags away.”
She was told that later in the day by Deputy Chief of Staff Tony Ornato (an account he initially disputed in press accounts, but declined to dispute under oath). She’d also been told of Trump’s plans two days in advance by Guiliani.
The seventh hearing, July 12, focused on connections between Trump and the violent extremist groups who spearheaded the invasion of the Capitol (including Roger Stone’s role as a gobetween), with live testimony from a former Oath Keepers spokesperson and a repentant participant in the riot, as well as an abundance of damning communications from Trump associates, extremists and others who bridged both worlds.
The eighth hearing, July 23, concluded the live hearing series with a big-picture review overview adding new evidence about Trump’s failure to act during the riot, with live testimony from two former Trump aides who resigned over the attacks. Matthew Pottinger was deputy national security advisor to the president. Trump’s tweet attacking Mike Pence was the breaking point for him. “I was disturbed and worried to see that the president was attacking Vice President Pence for doing his constitutional duty. So the tweet looked to me like the opposite of what we really needed at that moment, which was a de-escalation. And that’s why I had said earlier that it looked like fuel being poured on the fire,” he said. “So that was the moment that I decided that I was going to resign.”
Finally, in their Oct. 13 business meeting, the committee summarized its ironclad case that Trump was responsible for the Jan. 6 insurrection, and added significant new information that had come to light since July. And it concluded by issuing a subpoena for Trump to testify, having made perfectly clear precisely what he has to answer for. But no one seriously expected Trump to respond.
Instead, Trump was out campaigning for his election-denying candidates. But their disastrous performance on Nov. 8, losing almost every high-profile race, has changed the tone of politics considerably. While Trump’s leadership of the party seems shakier than ever — reflected in a series of post-election polls — his most prominent potential challenger, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, is seeking to outflank him on the right by doubling down on anti-vax conspiracism.
“Most leading Republicans right now — from Mitch McConnell to Mike Pence to Ron DeSantis to Mike Pompeo — they actually want DOJ to get Donald Trump and they want the Jan. 6 Committee to get Donald Trump because they don’t have the courage to do it themselves,” former GOP Congressman David Jolly said on MSNBC on Saturday. “They want somebody else to knock out Donald Trump and clear the path for them and then pretend that none of this ever happened.”
The DOJ’s decision on whether to charge Trump will lie first with Special Counsel Jack Smith, a war crimes prosecutor appointed to his post by Attorney General Merrick Garland on Nov. 18. Smith is overseeing both the DOJ’s investigations of Trump related to Jan. 6 as well as Trump’s theft and mishandling of over 11,000 government documents, some classified “top secret” or higher — a case that seemed to come out of nowhere with an Aug. 8 FBI search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence. The document case is seen as much more straight-forward, which leads many to expect a decision on it first.
But failure to act on the Jan. 6 coup attempt referrals would be seen by historians and other democracies as an invitation to another coup. It’s a pattern that’s been seen repeatedly since Germany in the 1920s and Japan in the 1930s. There’s no reason to think the U.S. is exempt.