The House January 6th Select Committee Hearings [Episode 2]
Early this morning (very early, for those of us on the West Coast!), the second June hearing of the House January 6th committee was supposed to get underway. This didn't happen on time, due to a last-minute changeup in the program. One of the two in-person witnesses for the first hour, Bill Stepien, cancelled his appearance at the last minute. Stepien was Donald Trump's campaign manager for the last three or four months of the 2020 presidential campaign, and was thus in a unique position to provide an eyewitness account of what went both before and after the election.
At first the only explanation was that he had a "family emergency," which was rather vague and could even have been interpreted as just "got cold feet, didn't want to testify," but as the committee's chair explained at the start of the hearing, Stepien's wife had just gone into labor, so of course he had to be with her. As "family emergency" excuses go, that one's pretty hard to beat, you have to admit. So the hearing was postponed for three-quarters of an hour and didn't get underway until 10:45 Eastern time.
What was simply astounding, given the sudden cancellation of a key witness, was that it only took the committee 45 minutes to regroup and put on a very adequate presentation anyway. That takes forethought and good contingency planning -- a whole team who had cued up a "Plan B," just in case Stepien (or, one assumes, any important witness) suddenly became unavailable. We wound up hearing plenty of testimony from Stepien, all of which had been recorded in earlier taped sessions. The flow of this presentation was just a little rougher than it assumably would have been if he had been there live, but it was seamless enough to do the job. As I said, that takes preparation -- you can't just throw something like that together from hours of videotape inside of 45 minutes, in other words. In any case, footnotes aside, let's dive right into the hearing itself.
Public Hearings of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol [Episode 2]
Today's hearing opened with statements by Chair Bennie Thompson, Vice-Chair Liz Cheney, and then Zoe Lofgren, who provided the bulk of the questioning throughout the hearing.
Thompson read a very short statement in that dignified and solemn voice he has, where he once again expressed both his sadness at what happened as well as his righteous anger at what Trump tried to do:
This morning, we'll tell the story of how Donald Trump lost an election, and knew he lost an election and, as a result of his loss, decided to wage an attack on our democracy, an attack on the American people by trying to rob you of your voice.... He ignored the will of the voters. He lied to his supporters and the country. And he tried to remain in office after the people had voted him out and the courts upheld the will of the people.
Cheney followed Thompson's statement with an opening statement of her own, which (as in the first hearing) was somewhat of an outline for what people would see in today's hearing. Cheney promised firsthand testimony from former Trump advisors, all of whom warned him not to declare victory on the night of the election, and then she previewed this with several clips from White House lawyers and campaign officials. Cheney then wrapped up her remarks and passed the baton to Zoe Lofgren.
Lofgren outlined exactly what she intended to show in this hearing, that no matter how many powerful and sober-minded people told Trump that his claims of election fraud were just false, he kept repeating them and kept raising money off them from his supporters. She promised she would show how Trump's "Big Lie" was also very much a "Big Ripoff," since he raked in hundreds of millions in donations from repeating it.
Once the opening statements were complete, Bennie Thompson began the presentation with a few very short clips of people who were close to and around Trump on the night of the election, which included (once again) both Trump's daughter Ivanka and also his son-in-law Jared Kushner. Thompson ran down the events of that night, allowing the witnesses to tell their own stories and stitching it all together into a narrative. This included statements that Rudy Giuliani -- the one person Trump was listening to that night, apparently -- was completely drunk (or "definitely intoxicated"). This timeline ended with the video clip of Trump speaking at 2:30 in the morning after election night, where he infamously and falsely claimed "Frankly, we did win this election," to the cheers of his sycophants in the audience.
Thompson then concluded by asking the other witness scheduled for the first hour (the former political editor for Fox News, Chris Stirewalt) who won the 2020 election, to which Stirewalt unequivocally answered: "Joseph Robinette Biden Junior, from the great state of Delaware." Thompson then handed things back to Lofgren, who took up the rest of the first hour with both video presentations and questions.
Stirewalt, of course, was the man responsible for Fox News calling the state of Arizona for Biden on the night of the election -- long before any other network or organization made the same call. He was rightfully proud of his decision (since it turned out to be correct), and actually got a little boastful about scooping the rest of the political world. He's certainly entitled to take such a victory lap, since he was fired from Fox for the temerity of being right.
One of the more interesting things to come from the first hour was testimony as to how Trump had latched onto his built-in excuse for losing (blaming the mail-in ballots) as far back as the summer of 2020. This has always all been out in the open, but it was good to see the committee get it into the record. Trump had his excuse for losing all teed up, and he was ready on Election Day to drive it as far as he could (a golf metaphor just seems appropriate). He insisted that: "The sky is falling!"... oh, excuse me, that: "There was massive fraud in the election!" long before any such conclusion could have been made by a reasonable person, backed up by actual evidence. Which his former attorney general Bill Barr attested to: "I saw absolutely zero basis for the allegations," both then and later. At various times, Barr called the allegations of fraud and rigging the election "complete nonsense," and "crazy stuff," and "rubbish," and "idiotic." You can say what you like about Bill Barr, but he does not mince his words. Here are just few choice quotes from Barr's testimony:
Before the election it was possible to talk sense to the president. And while you sometimes had to engage in a big wrestling match with him, it was possible to keep things on track. I felt that after the election... he wasn't listening to advice from me.
There was an avalanche of all these allegations of fraud that built up over a number of days, and it was like playing Whac-A-Mole, because something would come out one day and then the next day, it would be another issue.
I thought, "Boy, if he really believes this stuff, he has, you know, lost contact with -- he's become detached from reality."... When I would tell him how crazy some of these allegations were, there was never an indication of interest in what the actual facts were.
Got that? Detached from reality. Trump's own attorney general thought that. Trump was either lying his face off, or he was stone-cold crazy. Which was pretty obvious, from the outside looking in, but it's certainly interesting to hear confirmation from some of Trump's closest advisors. We also got a replay of Barr's "the idea of saying the election was stolen and putting out this stuff... was bullshit" video from the first hearing, just for good measure.
Another fact we were all reminded of during today's hearing is that when Trump's legal team continued to tell him things he didn't want to hear -- that there was no massive fraud at all -- and then Trump just stopped paying attention to them or got rid of them and replaced them with complete lunatics, such as the aforementioned Rudy Giuliani. Who was, according to former Trump advisor Jason Miller, "definitely intoxicated." And Sidney Powell, who quickly became so bizarre and unhinged that even Trump had to drop her from the team. When you've out-crazied Trump, that's really saying something!
Stepien characterized the shift by saying: "We call them kind of my team and Rudy's team. I didn't mind being characterize as being part of 'Team Normal'." To their credit, Team Normal kept trying, debunking every lunatic theory Trump tried to foist off on them (and the nation) -- all to no avail.
This was detailed even further in the second hour of the hearing, which featured: Al Schmidt, a former Republican city commissioner in Philadelphia; Byung J. "BJay" Pak, a former U.S. attorney in northern Georgia; and perhaps the most respected election-fraud lawyer on the Republican side of the aisle, Benjamin Ginsberg, who argued -- and won -- the Bush v. Gore case all the way up to the Supreme Court. They all said exactly the same thing (although with different emphasis) as the first two witnesses did: there was no proof of any election fraud or rigging of the elections, period.
There wasn't a 63 percent rate of error in the ballots, it was actually "0.0063 percent," or "less than one in 15,000" votes. No "suitcase full of ballots" mysteriously appeared in Georgia, it was an election lockbox that was placed there by election workers when they had previously stopped counting for the night. No 8,000 dead people voting (as Schmidt put it: "Not only was there not evidence of 8,000 dead voters voting in Pennsylvania, there wasn't evidence of eight"). No, there weren't more votes in Philly than there were registered voters (Barr: "there was no discrepancy at all"). No truckload of ballots sent from New York to Pennsylvania -- all of it was just completely and utterly false and unproven conspiracy theory. All of these stories were just made up out of whole cloth and sold to the rubes by Trump and his giant grifting machine.
The unexpectedly charismatic star of the hearing today was former White House lawyer Eric Herschmann, who summed up all of these allegations by saying: "What they were proposing, I thought, was nuts.... The theory [of foreigners interfering with voting machines] was also completely nuts, right? It was a combination of the Italians, the Germans, I mean, different things had been floating around as to who was involved." None of it was true. As Ginsberg put it, while outlining what a valid election fraud lawsuit was, versus the moonbeams Trump was chasing: "The 2020 election was not close.... The simple fact is that the Trump campaign did not make its case" in the over 60 lawsuits they filed. Ginsberg also pointed out that Trump and his supporters have pushed the lie that none of these cases were allowed to argue "the merits" of the case before being dismissed, stating that only half of the 61 losses in court happened due to technical rulings -- all the others were indeed decided on the merits of the case. "They did have their day in court," Ginsberg confirmed, but there was just "no credible evidence of fraud produced by the Trump campaign." Later in the hearing, Lofgren read from a huge scrolling list of how dismissive all of the judges -- 10 of whom were appointed by Trump himself -- on these cases were about Trump's claims.
Trump didn't care.
Lofgren pointed out that three of Trump's lawyers have already been referred to their state ethics boards in disciplinary cases for lying and clogging up the courts with bogus lawsuits, and that Rudy Giuliani has had his license to practice law suspended in both New York and Washington D.C. She finished by reading the most damning quote from a judge yet, that what all the cases amounted to was nothing short of "a coup in search of a legal theory."
The proceedings then wrapped up, with what I am hoping was a teaser for more examination at a later one of these hearings -- how big a scam the Big Lie truly was for Trump. His team pulled in a whopping $250 million from his supporters, all due to them being hammered relentlessly by repetitions of the Big Lie. Lofgren points out that all of the solicitations for these donations promised that the money would go to a so-called "Official Election Defense Fund," but when later asked about it under oath one member of the campaign admitted such a fund never actually existed, it was instead merely a "marketing tactic." Lofgren concluded:
We found evidence that the Trump campaign and its surrogates misled donors as to where their funds would go and what they would be used for. So not only was there the Big Lie, there was the Big Ripoff.
Again, I have heard that the committee has a whole team working on the "follow the money" aspect of it all, so hopefully this was just a preview of things to come later.
Liz Cheney followed up on Lofgren's excellent closing quip about the Big Ripoff by playing her own zinger of a video clip, from the aforementioned Herschmann. Herschmann is talking about the fact that even after January 6th happened, one Trump lawyer in particular -- John Eastman -- was still pushing hard on all of the conspiracies. The day after the January 6th insurrection attempt, Herschmann told Eastman on a phone call:
I said to him, "Are you out of your effin' mind?" I said I only want to hear two words coming out of your mouth from now on: "orderly transition."
After a quick video clip to remind everyone that the January 6th insurrectionists fully bought into all aspects of Trump's Big Lie, Thompson brought the second hearing to a close.
Conclusions
Episode 2 of the House January 6th committee hearings went pretty well, after a last-minute change in the lineup of witnesses. Nobody was really sure if Bill Stepien would have been a hostile witness or not, so the fact that he had to attend his wife while she was in labor perhaps turned out to be rather serendipitous. The committee certainly shifted gears on the fly and went with what they obviously had prepared as Plan B, which worked well enough. There were enough video clips of Stepien testifying, which were chock-full of revelations, so his actual presence in the room wasn't missed all that much.
The committee -- and Zoe Lofgren in particular -- did an excellent job proving what they set out to prove. Donald Trump was told -- by advisor after advisor, from his campaign, from his cabinet, from lawyers in the White House, from the Justice Department, and by many other credible sources -- that all his claims of election fraud and election rigging were not supported by any evidence whatsoever. Trump didn't care. He just kept looking for some crazy conspiracy theory that would prove to be true in the end -- or at least believable enough for the money flow to continue. He never found one, but that didn't stop him from grifting a quarter-billion dollars from his own supporters.
In short, Trump knew his Big Lie was, well... a big lie. There was never any truth to it, but it sure did prove to come in handy at separating his supporters from their hard-earned money. Trump started his Big Lie storyline months before the election (in fact, it was a holdover from the 2016 election, where he made plenty of wild-eyed claims about voting fraud, but nobody really paid much attention, since everyone agreed that he had indeed won the Electoral College vote). He relentlessly pushed this Big Lie, and indeed still continues pushing it today. Because it was personally profitable for him to do so. As well as the fact that Trump avoided being called what is the worst thing in the world (to him): a loser. Today's hearing proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that Donald Trump was and still is a loser. Bigly.
-- Chris Weigant
Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant
Before I peruse the summation, I would like to testify for the record that I watched Episode 2 in its entirety and hereby formally identify as "Team Normal." :)
I had thoughts about the first hearing. I even jotted down notes. Then I read your column, CW.
You said it better than I did, hence no comments. You wrote exceptionally well when covering the first hearing.
yup. donald is far from the only sore loser in american politics, but i think we can conclusively state that he is the bigliest and soreliest sore loser in history.
CW
This timeline ended with the video clip of Trump speaking at 2:30 in the morning after election night, where he infamously and falsely claimed "Frankly, we did win this election," to the cheers of his sycophants in the audience.
Every single time I see that footage of Trump after the election (proving without doubt that he already knew he had lost), I cannot stop myself from laughing. I mean, what kind of moron announces that they are going to the SCOTUS if they don't already know they've lost!?
Idiot.
We must completely and permanently destroy Russia's ability to wage war beyond its own borders. Anything less is only a hiatus, a temporary suspension of the current crisis, not a resolution of it.
Russia delenda est
@dan,
my sarcasm filter must be malfunctioning because i can't for the life of me tell which way that comment leans.
JL,
yup. donald is far from the only sore loser in american politics, but i think we can conclusively state that he is the bigliest and soreliest sore loser in history.
Yes, that is your truth and I am sure you believe that..
But the simple fact is, the Russia Collusion delusion is, BY FAR, the biggest, longest and most expensive case of sore luserism in history..
dsws,
Speaking of Ukraine...
The battle of Donbas could prove decisive in Ukraine war
With the conflict now in its fourth month, it’s a high-stakes campaign that could dictate the course of the entire war.
If Russia prevails in the battle of Donbas, it will mean that Ukraine loses not only land but perhaps the bulk of its most capable military forces, opening the way for Moscow to grab more territory and dictate its terms to Kyiv.
US Officials concede that Putin is weeks away from controlling the entire eastern portion of Ukraine..
Word is, that's been Putin's goal since the start of the war, as the eastern part of Ukraine holds the bulk of Ukraine's treasure..
Another failure for Biden's Handlers... :^/
The 6JC is simply a kabuki side-show... A vain attempt to distract Americans from the disaster that is the Biden's Handlers administration..
Inside Biden’s frustration with soaring prices
President Biden seemed upbeat when he visited an Iowa biofuels plant in April to talk about bringing down gas prices, standing before a large tractor as he declared that “biofuels have a role to play right now” and announced a plan to expand the use of ethanol over the summer.
But privately, Biden dismissed the policy as ineffective and questioned the value of the trip, according to two people familiar with the conversations. After returning to the White House, he hauled his senior staff, including chief of staff Ron Klain, into the Oval Office, badgering them with questions about the purpose of the event.
The Biden's Handlers administration has been one epic failure after another.
The 6JC Hollywood show will be no different...
And once the GOP owns Congress then we'll see some REAL investigations... Can't wait for the monthly impeachments of Joe Biden.. :D
The vast majority of Americans see the 6JC for what it is..
A BS exercise in failed attempt to distract Americans from the complete and utter incompetence of the Biden's Handlers Administration..
More Americans were interested in a YOUNG SHELDON re-run than are interested in the 6JC... :D
Now THAT's funny!!! :D
More info on Ukraine...
Behind Nato’s defensive ‘shield’ lies weakness and division. Ukraine will pay the price
Miscalculations by the west opened the way for Russia’s invasion. As Kyiv’s outgunned forces fight for survival, the alliance risks another catastrophic failure
Ukraine proves once again the total ineptness and downright malfeasance of the Biden's Handlers administration..
Just another article of impeachment for Biden's Handlers.. Right along side the gross and perverse debacle what was the Afghanistan withdrawal...
Chalk up another Biden's Handlers failure... :eyeroll:
Yunno how we can tell this is another Democrat failure??
Because the Ukraine story has been buried... :^/
Biden's job approval lower than President Trump's
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/president-biden-job-approval-7320.html
Ouch!! That's just GOTTA hurt!! :D
There are a LOT of Biden voters with buyer's remorse these days.. :D
JL,
Here's another article for you to read.. It's in keeping with the Jodi Shaw story from yesterday..
Why I left the left
The egalitarian, pro-worker left is gone and it’s not coming back.
https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/06/08/why-i-left-the-left/
This one part is especially apropos to your response from that article and your likely response to this one..
The left, seemingly along with most feminists, has now decided it no longer knows what a woman is, and that anyone who claims to know must be silenced.
At a certain point, we have to stop pretending this is just about a few bad apples. We have to stop hanging on, imagining this group will come around. It is time to deal with reality, not wishful thinking: this is the left now, whether we like it or not.
The facts clearly show this type of totalitarian authoritarianism is not just a mere anecdotal fallacy sprinkled here or there..
This is what the Democrat Party stands for today...
Like it or not, this is today's Democrat Party...
And, again, speaking of Ukraine..
Ukraine Has Begun Moving Sensitive Data Outside Its Borders
Some government databases are already on cloud servers in Poland, and officials are negotiating similar arrangements with France, Estonia and several other nations
Looks like Zelensky is reading the writing on the wall..
Nothing in yesterday's segment of the kangaroo court that is the 6JC hearings changed one simple fact..
This kabuki theater will do NOTHNG to stop President Trump from running in 2024...
As with ALL Democrat endeavors, the 6JC will end in failure...
And STILL not a single condemnation of the attempted assassination of SCOTUS Justice Kavanaugh....
At least we know where Weigantians stand on violence against political enemies..
All for it.. :eyeroll:
All the promises made by Democrats and Trump/America haters over the 6JC were the same promises that Democrats and Trump/America haters made over the Russia Collusion Delusion...
And we all know how well the Russia Collusion delusion worked out for Democrats, eh? :D The Democrat con simply made President Trump STRONGER...
So it will be with the 6JC....
Democrats are virtually GUARANTEEING a President Trump landslide in 2024... :D
Looks like Zelensky is reading the writing on the wall..
Too bad he couldn't do that pre-February 24th ... :(
He has a lot to account for.
Liz,
Word....
Wrong.
Jan. 6 committee postpones Wednesday hearing without explanation
The committee has not released an explanation for the delay
And it's all starting to fall apart.. :D
A sign of Democrats in charge..
A NY Court rules that an elephant is NOT a person..
A CA court rules that a bumblebee is a fish...
Democrats.. :eyeroll:
Wrong.
It's an invitation to catastrophe to enter into a conflict without the will to prevail..
Zelensky lost the will to win...
And Biden's Handlers did not help the situation by using Zelensky to beat down the Russians...
When Zelensky decided that NATO membership was no longer worth fighting for, he should have surrendered and saved thousands and thousands of lives...
A CA court rules that a bumblebee is a fish...
Do you disagree with the ruling or just trying to laugh at democrats while ignoring the actual story?
The California Endangered Species Act was passed in 1970, which is in a very small slice of time that Republicans had a majority in both the state Senate and Assembly. Reagan was governor and would have signed this in to law. Just sayin'...
Hilarious: and the judge was nominated by Trump for United States district judge but never made it due to Senate procedural issues...
Zelenskiy wants EU membership. NATO he has cooled on a bit, given that they haven't been as supportive as he'd like. That's not exactly capitulation.
Ukraine is fighting for its future, Russia is fighting for someone else's past, which is why we will win - President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's address to the student community of leading British universities, June 11, 2022
@[15],
This one, as Liz says, was non-serious. If you want an article that details where the left and right actually reside ideologically, start here:
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/07/george-packer-four-americas/619012/
Michale
10
I found the original source of the article you copied:
https://issuesinsights.com/2022/06/13/most-americans-skeptical-that-democrats-jan-6-investigation-seeks-the-truth-ii-tipp-poll/
The vast majority of Americans see the 6JC for what it is..
If you had actually read the online polling data from the article you dumped onto Chris's website, you would have easily discovered that it didn't fit the narrative you were going for since those 44% who were confident in the committee's investigation actually outnumber those 40% who aren't with 15% saying they were "not sure."
A BS exercise in failed attempt to distract Americans from the complete and utter incompetence of the Biden's Handlers Administration..
"A BS exercise in failed attempt to distract" is a perfect description of your comments; the very least you could do is stop plagiarizing the work of others and dumping it here. Just saying. :)