Why has Donald Trump not been deposed or subpoenaed by the January 6 Committee?

Politics & Elections
81

Can I just say that setting your winning condition as “changing the mind of the persons in the exact center of your targets spell” is a condition which can never be won?

I have never been, nor ever will be, interested if all Die Harder Trumpers begin to crack. 400 years after the fact there are people with passionate opinions about Oliver Cromwell, all sides. 50 years later there are millions of Americans convinced Nixon did nothing wrong. And so it will be with Trump.

It’s the margins. It’s people like Zach Thornton (no relation) here who, for the first time, has finally admitted that Trump should have conceded and that the rioters were armed. This guy and I have been going back and forth on Twitter for about 5 years now… I’m sure he thinks I’m quite mad… and he is finally admitting partial defeat because the evidence is too overwhelming.

A crack in the armor. Not much, but a start so by 2024 he’ll at least have convinced himself to vote DeSatan in the primary:

(Given Twitter’s peculiarities, I linked to the bottom of the conversation. This way, all relevant tweets are neatly threaded above, so just scroll to the top and read down.)

Again, not a total concession, but chinks in the armor: that’s how it starts.

Then there’s… I’ll call him David, since it’s a FB account… David, who owns a successful drywall operation here in San Antonio. Dave voted for Trump in 2016 but, being a commie libtard RINO apparently, silently voted for Biden in 2020. Silently, because he’s not interested in his business being targeted by the Right (aka, the people he knows).

But the J6 committee has… radicalized him, for want of a better word… for he posted this out of the blue on July 4th:

Imgur
Imgur

So, to answer the question from a different perspective, the committee does not have to depose/subpoena Donald Trump, not yet. They are already being effective in diminishing his political power, which is the goal of both Democrats and a significant wing of the Republican party (including DeSantis and anyone else with 2024 aspirations).

(And yes, I know that many want DJT to go to jail or at least stand trial, but him losing the 2024 Republican primary would also put an end to his political life and if that is all we get out of the J6C, than I am still very glad to have it.)

82

Well I asked first. I asked several posts ago why you think no significant republicans are volunteering to testify.

But sure, I can answer your questions no problem.

The answer to basically all your questions is “No, I never claimed it would”. The only open-ended question you asked is “What will his face at the hearings do?” which I’ve described several times already, but I’ll repeat again now: it would get more people to watch, crucially including his supporters. It would mean he’d have to lie, confess, or plead the 5th live on TV in front of tens of millions of Americans.

Of course it’s not going to convince all of his supporters. His supporters include the QAnon nutcases for one thing. But it would have moved the needle in terms of getting a critical mass of people to accept what happened and enough public pressure on Garland to do something.

It’s all academic, since very obviously Trump and his acolytes have used every method in the book – legal and illegal – to avoid getting anywhere near these hearings. So it’s irrelevant whether the committee actually requested he be interviewed. But if they didn’t even try, it’s a bizarre strategic choice IMO.

83

Trump likes crowds that self-select for being rabid Trump supporters. He would not like appearing before an unfriendly committee.

If the committee wanted to subpoena Trump, could they do so?. He would refuse and accept whatever, no?

84

No Republicans are volunteering because they’re guilty. When have I even hinted otherwise? To spare me from rereading every post who besides you has raised this point?

I violently disagree with your conclusions. For once the Democrats are doing the right thing. You’re like the secret enemy agent in the war films who wants to trick the good guys to do something that will get them all killed. Fortunately, this is just an internet discussion so nothing you say will have any such effect. Nevertheless, you are so wrong that I couldn’t let it go. It has an effect on me like the Tartaria Conspiracy.

But I’ll drop it now since we’re repeating each other in a useless circle, which I also heartily dislike.

85

Firstly no-one suggested that you had hinted otherwise. I was trying to get you to answer the question, which, great, now you finally have.

But secondly, doesn’t this make your point self-contradictory? You’re saying the democrats were right not to subpeona Trump and that Trump didn’t volunteer to testify because he knows he’s guilty. But the committee are also well aware that Trump is guilty. So which is it? Is it bad or good for a guilty trump to be interviewed by the committee?

Nice implied ad hominem.
But no, look, we’re on the same side on this. I want full accountability for all those in power responsible for instigating or encouraging the coup, or that have tried to spread misinformation since. And I want most American people (you’ll never get all the loonies) to have a shared understanding of what happened.

But if I were betting my own money at this point, I’d be betting against that. Not enough people watched the hearings, no senior republicans have taken the stand, and by the time Garland gets his finger out his ass, he’ll likely be working with a republican-led congress and senate.

86

I think that lawyer is a theoretical construct only, and could never exist in this dimension.

87

In different ways it is both bad for Trump and bad for the committee. Its not really a zero sum game.

From Trumps point of view, agreeing to testify in front of the committee will give it a legitimacy that he doesn’t want to give it, and would put him in a subordinate position. People don’t tell him where to go he tells people where to go. There also isn’t really much in it for him. There is no money to be grafted from his appearance, and no adoring crowds to cheer at his answers. There is also of course the legal danger that comes from having a compulsive liar under oath, but that would only come up if he actually agreed to testify. So from Trumps point of view the best action is to rant to his base about the illegitimacy of the committee from the side lines and block any attempt to compel his participation.

From the committees point of view, there is no benefit trying to get Trump to testify. Given his likely non-cooporation for the reasons described above, they would have to engage in a long and heated legal fight to compel his appearance. Short of having him arrested for contempt of Congress, it is unlikely that they would be able to apply any significant leverage, and while seeing Trump marched to a jail cell by DOJ agents might provide a certain degree of satisfaction to the left in the long term it would be counter productive. The committee would no longer be remembered for all of their findings regarding Jan 6th, but instead remembered for having a president, their principal political adversary arrested. This would be seen as petty and partisan, Trump would claim vicitimhood saying that his only crime was failing to go along with an obvious witch hunt, lines would be drawn on this particular issue and any discussion about Trumps actual crimes will be lost.

Even if by some miracle they did manage to get Trump to testify, he wouldn’t actually be very useful to them. The official goal of the committee is information finding. Trump would not be at all helpful here since the only statements he would make would be either evasions or self serving lies. There is no useful information they could get form interviewing him. His testimony would also be counterproductive to their larger unofficial goal of publicizing their findings. Their success so far has been getting Republicans (who are difficult to portray as partisan) to truthfully testify to a clear unified narrative that points to Trumps culpability. Having Trump in to spout alternative narrative in a non-stop spout of falsehoods would distract from that clear message, ruining much of the success they are having. If he goes too far they might be able to get him on lying to Congress, but that has the same disadvantages as trying to get him for failing to appear. It appears to the public at large like a political gotcha, and eclipses the serious crimes that he actually did commit.

88

I see your point but I think it’s an excluded middle.

There are a lot of things in between not even asking to interview him and stopping at absolutely nothing to get him in the room, long past any strategic value in doing so.

Also my point is about all the implicated senior Republicans; I keep having to limit it to Trump because of the OP. I think they either didn’t bother to ask them because they knew they’d refuse, or they did ask and didn’t chase it further. But I disagree with the point that most in this thread are making, that it would be an error to get any of those guys to testify.

89

If they do anything to get him in the room it lends credibility, for the Trumpists, to the “The comity didn’t wait to hear Trump’s testimony”-argument.

90

Kinzinger must have heard me.

91

‘I wouldn’t put it past him to even lie under oath’

So, call him, let him lie, then charge him with perjury.

92

IIRC, when Mr. Man Woman Person Camera TV, the man who claims to have the greatest memory ever, has been deposed in the past, he answers every question with “I don’t recall”. It’s really boring.

93

The purpose of these hearings is to get to the bottom of what happened, not engage is what would rightfully be denounced as attempts at “gotcha” entrapment games.