Yeah, I don’t see those guys testifying under oath-- they’ll be asked a whole lot of other questions about stuff they won’t want to talk about.
I have a sneaking suspicion… just a whisper of a hunch, mind you… that this is coming as no surprise to Rusty. 
So the Secret Service can’t claim executive privilege?
So with the conversation being “whatever the Secret Service guys say in the press is meaningless - it only matters what they have to say under oath”, doesn’t that mean the committee has little choice but to subpoena these guys and see what they have to say?
I’m kinda fatalistic and I see how the MAGAts are slowly but surely changing the narrative that Ms Hutchinson’s testimony is “garbage in / garbage out” simply due to this one meaningless detail.
Pat Cipollone has been subpoenaed.
I was about to say they shouldn’t have a choice, but then
Somebody–the committee, or @romansperson --ninja’ed me.
Holy shit - that was a great WaPo article. Thank you for sharing the gift link. 
If subpoenaed, sure. What I meant was, I don’t see them voluntarily rushing forward in the interest of setting the record straight.
This.
It’s quite telling that this piece of trivia is what they (and Fox) are clinging to at this point. Forget about Trump actually telling folks to let guns into his rally. Let’s focus on whether or not Trump actually succeeded at lunging at the wheel of the vehicle.
I don’t agree at all. I think she’s someone who, at the very young age of 24/25, found herself, by virtue of her position, embroiled in one of the highest profile legal investigations ever. I think that up until a few weeks ago she was relying on legal advice intended primarily to benefit Trump and Mark Meadows, not her, and was increasingly aware of that, and uneasy about it.
I think the public hearings, all the damning information coming out, all the public attention, scared her. I don’t think she outright lied in her earlier depositions, but I think she was encouraged to be less than forthcoming. I think she got scared that her lack of candor was going to come back to bite her, so she sought her own legal counsel and they advised her to do what she did. I think the rushed nature of the testimony was the result of her being strongly pressured to stay loyal, but I think she was past the point of wavering, she just wanted to stop it by testifying immediately.
Now, I enjoy wild and crazy tales of former President Trump’s douchebaggery as much as the next guy and while I appreciated the entertainment value I think the committee made a mistake in airing testimony that was so clearly hearsay that Judge Judy would’ve cut it off.
I think they should’ve had her testify that Ornato and Engle seemed shaken and disturbed by the something that happened in the car with the President and I think that testimony, combined with her later direct observations of Trump and Meadows’s behavior, would’ve gotten the point Trump REALLY wanted to go to the Capitol across to the viewing public, albeit in a less dramatic matter.
The problem with allowing the hearsay is that it is easily discredited. It seems that EVERYONE is in agreement with the extremely damning fact that Trump REALLY wanted to go to the Capitol, yet now we are hung up on details like “Did he really lunge for the steering wheel or did he just throw a big tantrum and wave his tiny hands around?”
It loses the point, and it’s counterproductive.
Allow me to continue!
We watched Donald Trump raise a private army with knowing intent on unleashing it upon the government of the United States. This meets the Constitutional definition which states, and I quote, “Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.” The January 6th committee has proven to America that Donald Trump has met this Constitutional definition, and they have given us more than the two witnesses required.
Coupled with his malignant incompetence regarding handling of the COVID crisis, the man most qualified for the title “American Antichrist” will twist and writhe in the pure poetry of pain as he burns in Hell for all time. But, in this world, Donald Trump deserves nothing more than a cigarette, a blindfold, and three minutes with a chaplain for he committed the gravest of American crimes - he tried to steal my vote. And 81 million others.
Damn him to Hell. He is an enemy of the American State. And, by this time, after this much evidence, so are his followers. Anti-American deplorables, all of you.
I’ll workshop this a bit and then post it to various Facebook comments, see what happens. Also, credit to Dan Simmons, fuckwad that he is.
You know, to the point about treason above, I find this page very helpful, as well as the next one (about Aaron Burr). This quote from John Marshall is especially illuminating:
“…On the contrary, if war be actually levied, that is, if a body of men be actually assembled for the purpose of effecting by force a treasonable purpose, all those who perform any part, however minute, or however remote from the scene of action, and who are actually leagued in the general conspiracy, are to be considered as traitors. But there must be an actual assembling of men, for the treasonable purpose, to constitute a levying of war.”
https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artIII-S3-C1-2/ALDE_00001226/
https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artIII-S3-C1-3/ALDE_00000150/
@JohnT, you have to also point out the unorganized and low-brow level of understanding basic election law about the insurrectionists. Thinking a VP can overturn an election voted by millions.
I know you really want this to be true, but Trump did not really assemble an army together. It has to be pretty clear, and not an indirect thing.
There is a reason why people are using the terms insurrection and seditious conspiracy. Because this was neither an organized army, nor did war occur.
You have to look at the long history of treason charges and convictions to get an idea of what is involved. They’ve all involved actual deadly conflict between an organized group of people (foreign or domestic) and the US military. That didn’t happen on January 6, 2021.
The more plausible charges that might come about could put Trump in prison for whatever short time he has left on this planet, or at least prevent him from ever taking office again. I don’t think we’re anywhere in the range of treason.
ETA: A correction; former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner has been saying Trump is guilty of treason, but I’m not convinced. It’s a high bar to clear.
I’ll add, I’d also be pleased if Trump was charged with treason, I just don’t think it’ll happen.
That only shows that the legal definition of treason is flawed. If goading an armed mob to violently disturb the functioning of Congress, effectively a attempted coup, doesn’t qualify. Then the term is meaningless.
The question boils down to the legal, not the colloquial, definitions of “organized army” and “war”.
The only apparent difference I can see between the 1/6 insurrectionists and an “organized army” is that the former were generally a bunch of pathetic goobers lacking much in the way of organization. That’s not really an issue so far as the law is concerned; for instance, the organized crime statutes apply to both the most rigorously disciplined and the most ineptly incompetent criminal syndicates so long as the basic elements (e.g. conspiracy) are met.
Likewise, there are all sorts of situations with relatively little violence, or even none for years on end, which are states of “war”, legally speaking.
Indeed. The real significance of Trump’s toddler-tantrum on the aborted trip to the Capitol was not whether or not he “lunged at the steering wheel”, but the fact – disputed by no one – that he so desperately wanted to go there that he had a total meltdown when told that he couldn’t. And the only reason he wanted to go there was to rally his “troops” and further incite them.
I think he wanted to go to the Capitol so that he could march in with his Proud Little Boys and Oathbreakers, enter the House chamber, present a certificate that he won the election and assure the Congress that either their brains or their signatures would be on that certificate.
Crayon or Sharpie?