Ninth Select Committee Hearing #9
The ninth public Select Committee hearing was more like a business meeting. No witnesses this time. Each committee member told a part of the story that showed that Trump was responsible for the attack. The intended audience was the people who don’t pay attention to politics every day and need to get caught up. They ended the hearing with a 9–0 vote to subpoena Trump. They did it in public so the American people could be there.
“The hearing is putting together so compelling a case that Trump personally schemed to overturn the election results that his refusal to testify will obviously confirm his guilt.” — Laurence Tribe
Over the past year, the bipartisan Select Committee has interviewed over 1,000 people. 30 of them took the fifth. None of the witnesses they called were Democrats.
The big shocker was how much the Secret Service knew about the planned attack in advance. They received and sent emails on December 26 that showed that they knew about what the Proud Boys were going to do. They were planning on marching into DC fully armed with so many of them that they would outnumber law enforcement. They planned to occupy other federal buildings besides the Capitol.
Even though they knew about the pending violence, the Secret Service didn’t change Trump’s route or schedule. They didn’t alert anybody about what they knew and when they were subpoenaed by the Select Committee they deleted their texts.
Members of the Secret Service knew for 10 days that an attack was planned on the Capitol and that people could get killed. Some of them participated in Trump’s plot to overthrow the government.
Mike Pence knew that the Secret Service knew. That’s why he refused to get in the car with them when they wanted to take him to another location.
The FBI has a role to play in the attack, too. They received notice alerting them that they had traitors in their midst. A whistleblower felt that there was a “sizeable percentage of the employee population that felt sympathetic to the group that stormed the Capitol.” FBI Director Chris Wray didn’t do anything about it. He is a member of the Federalist Society, like four of the corrupt Supreme Court justices, one of whom he gave a full pass to after being ordered to investigate him during his confirmation hearing. Chris Wray ignored 4,500 tips about Brett Kavanaugh that came in on their call line.
The Select Committee showed new video footage of congressional leadership from both houses taking cover during the attack, trying to figure out what to do. Nancy Pelosi took charge. She was calm. She was cool. She called governors and the mayor of DC to get reinforcements — police and national guard. Chuck Schumer told Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen to get it together and do his job — tell Trump to tell the mob to leave. Trump did nothing. Nancy Pelosi stepped in to serve as president and saved lives. Republicans like Kevin McCarthy and Steve Scalise have been saying that Nancy Pelosi did nothing on January 6 when the tourists got out of control (or Antifa or BLM, which is it?) The video shows that Steve Scalise was there in the room while Nancy Pelosi did Trump’s job.
The committee also showed the infamous video of both Kevin McCarthy and Mitch McConnell speaking on their respective floors, denouncing Trump right after the insurrection as a reminder that Republicans are all a bunch of liars and we’re all still in danger because of them.
When the Chief of Staff told Nancy Pelosi that she got word that Trump wanted to march with the mob to the Capitol she said she hoped he would so she could punch him out because she’s been waiting for this. “I’ll go to jail, but I’d be happy.” Nancy Pelosi is a bad ass. On top of saving the day and calling everybody back to finish the vote, the woman never broke a sweat or said the word, “fuck.” Everybody else was letting fuck fuck fuck fly but not Nancy. She hates that word.
The committee showed plenty of evidence proving that Trump knew he lost. He had planned back in July to say he won even if he didn’t. His scheme was to not leave and a lot of people were in on it. He declared he won before the votes were all counted.
“I don’t want people to know we lost,” Trump told Mark Meadows. “Why didn’t we make more calls?”
More calls to WHO?
Trump wanted the violence and he wanted people to die so he could invoke the Insurrection Act and declare martial law. Trump knew the mob had weapons. He told the Secret Service to let them through anyway because “They’re not here for me.”
