The January 6th Committee hearings got underway last evening, and the criminality recounted in the primetime show included that yes, the Committee absolutely believes that Donald Trump organized a conspiracy to commit sedition, that everyone in Trump's inner circle, including his family, were in on it, that former VP Mike Pence got cold feet at the end and Trump wanted active harm to come to him as a result, and that multiple sitting Republicans in Congress wanted full pardons after the coup succeeded and Trump remained in power.
Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) was one of “multiple” GOP lawmakers who asked President Trump for pardons given their roles in seeking to unwind the 2020 election results, the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol said in its first hearing Thursday night.
Perry’s office forcefully denied the allegation.
Vice Chairwoman Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) said Perry, who helped introduce former President Trump to a mid-level Justice Department attorney willing to forward his election fraud claims, was among several seeking pardons due to their roles.
“As you will see, Representative Perry contacted the White House in the weeks after January 6th to seek a presidential pardon. Multiple other Republican congressmen also sought presidential pardons for their roles in attempting to overturn the 2020 election,” Cheney said.
Perry spokesman Jay Ostrich denied that Perry sought a pardon from Trump.
“Laughable, ludicrous, and a thoroughly soulless lie,” Ostrich told The Hill.
But we know for a fact that GOP lawmakers wanted pardons. They knew what they were doing was seditious conspiracy.
CNN reported in January 2021 that “several” GOP lawmakers who were involved with the rally at the Ellipse in front of the White House that Trump spoke before the Capitol riot sought pardons from Trump. GOP lawmakers who spoke at the rally include Arizona GOP Reps. Paul Gosar and Andy Biggs, as well as Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.).
And according to an October 2021 Rolling Stone report, Gosar floated the idea of “blanket pardons” for some of those organizing the Ellipse rally of Jan. 6.
The Jan. 6 committee issued subpoenas to Perry, Biggs, and Brooks. In a May letter requesting information from Biggs, the committee said that Biggs was identified by former White House personnel as being part of “an effort by certain House Republicans after January 6th to seek a presidential pardon for activities taken in connection with President Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.”
And that's because Trump wanted to become dictator, as the NY Times's Peter Baker tells us.
In the entire 246-year history of the United States, there was surely never a more damning indictment presented against an American president than outlined on Thursday night in a cavernous congressional hearing room where the future of democracy felt on the line.
Other presidents have been accused of wrongdoing, even high crimes and misdemeanors, but the case against Donald J. Trump mounted by the bipartisan House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol described not just a rogue president but a would-be autocrat willing to shred the Constitution to hang onto power at all costs.
As the committee portrayed it during its prime-time televised hearing, Mr. Trump executed a seven-part conspiracy to overturn a free and fair democratic election. According to the panel, he lied to the American people, ignored all evidence refuting his false fraud claims, pressured state and federal officials to throw out election results favoring his challenger, encouraged a violent mob to storm the Capitol and even signaled support for the execution of his own vice president.
“Jan. 6 was the culmination of an attempted coup, a brazen attempt, as one rioter put it shortly after Jan. 6, to overthrow the government,” said Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the chairman of the select committee. “The violence was no accident. It represents Trump’s last stand, most desperate chance to halt the transfer of power.”
The purpose of the hearings is the make the case to America why Donald Trump must be arrested, tried, and convicted of sedition.
They made that case last night alone.
Most incriminating were the words of Mr. Trump’s own advisers and appointees, played over video on a giant screen above the committee dais and beamed out to a national television audience. There was his own attorney general who told him that his false election claims were “bullshit.” There was his own campaign lawyer who testified that there was no evidence of fraud sufficient to change the outcome. And there was his own daughter, Ivanka Trump, who acknowledged that she accepted the conclusion that the election was not, in fact, stolen as her father kept claiming.
Much of the evidence was outlined by the lead Republican on the committee, Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, who has been ostracized by Mr. Trump and much of her own party for consistently denouncing his actions after the election. Unwavering, she sketched out the case and then addressed her fellow Republicans who have chosen to stand by their defeated former president and excuse his actions.
“I say this to my Republican colleagues who are defending the indefensible: There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone but your dishonor will remain,” she said.
These bastards have to fry. I know in the past I've said that Trump will never be convicted, and that any federal court proceedings will almost certainly lead to nationwide attacks on Democrats, but it has to happen. After what I saw last night, we have to do it.
More than ever, I am convinced that the alternative to perp-walking Trump is far worse.