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January 6 Hearings Live

If these people can unilaterally ignore such subpoenas, are they really productive? Seriously, what's the point of them?
 
These kinds of situations remind me of a comedian's sketch I saw a long time ago about police without guns: "Stop! Or I'll say 'stop' again!"
 
Opinion | Why We Have to Wave the ‘Bloody Shirt’ of Jan. 6 - The New York Times
Policy is rational. Politics is not. It takes a story to move voters, an emotional connection that tells them something about themselves and the world in which they live or, alternately, the world in which they would like to live.

Without a story to tell — without a way to make the issues of an election speak to the values of an electorate — even strong candidates with popular policies can fall flat. And the reverse is also true: A divisive figure with unpopular beliefs can go far if he or she can tell the right kind of story to the right number of people.
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Author Jamelle Bouie then reviewed some history.

The Republican Party, in the 1860's, was not as secure in its position as one might think.
Anxious to retain power in Washington, Republicans took every opportunity to pin the late rebellion on their Democratic opponents, north and south. None of it was subtle.

Supporters of Ulysses S. Grant in the 1868 presidential election, for example, urged Unionists to “Vote as you shot.” Likewise, in a speech for Grant, Gen. Ambrose Burnside, referring to violence against Republicans and freed Blacks in the states of the former Confederacy, attacked the Democratic nominee, Horatio Seymour, a former governor of New York, as “emphatically the leader of the new rebellion as Robert E. Lee was of the old.”
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They did it again in 1870.
Democrats, and conservative white Southerners in particular, would come to call this the bloody shirt strategy, after an apocryphal story in which Benjamin Butler of Massachusetts used the bloodied shirt of a wounded soldier in a speech on the floor of the House of Representatives. “The phrase was used over and over during the Reconstruction era,” writes Stephen Budiansky in “The Bloody Shirt: Terror After Appomattox”: “It was a staple of the furious and sarcastic editorials that filled Southern newspapers in those days, of the indignant orations by Southern white political leaders who protested that no people had suffered more, been humiliated more, been punished more than they had.”
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Whining about what big victims they were.
If the bloody shirt enraged Democratic partisans — if the term itself became, as Budiansky writes, “a synonym for any rabble-rousing demagoguery” aimed at “stirring old enmities” — it was because it worked.

The bloody shirt helped President Grant win his 1872 race for re-election, as his supporters and surrogates hammered Democrats as recalcitrant rebels. ...

The bloody shirt shaped the 1876 campaign as well. ...

Republicans kept on waving the bloody shirt, kept on tying their candidates to patriotic feeling and memories of the war ...
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going into detail about how Republican politicians linked Democratic ones to the former Confederacy.

JB continues:
What is important is that the Republican Party never took for granted that voters would blame the Democratic Party for its role in the rebellion and vote accordingly. Republican politicians had to make salient the public’s memory of, and anger over, the war. And, I should say, they were right to do so. It was right to wave the bloody shirt in the wake of a brutal, catastrophic war that according to recent estimates claimed close to a million lives. That we, as modern Americans, learn the phrase as a negative is an astounding coup of postwar Southern propaganda.
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Like the "Lost Cause" narrative, about the South being heroic martyrs.
 
Opinion | What We Did the Last Time We Broke America - The New York Times
Politics was vigorous and nasty from around 1860 to around 1900, then it quieted down. Politicians got a lot done in the first two decades of the 20th cy., but political participation went down from 80% to 50% voting, and long incumbencies became common.

I'd add the 1850's to his timeline, with strife between supporters and opponents of slavery, like in "Bleeding Kansas".

So the US may be returning to the 2nd half of the 19th cy in this regard.
 
Opinion | Cori Bush and A.O.C. Are Right About Jan. 6 and 1866 - The New York Times

Meaning that Congresspeople who supported the Jan. 6 insurrection should be expelled. Author Jamelle Bouie then went into some history, of what happened after the Civil War.
The original context for this, obviously, was the Civil War and its immediate aftermath. By the summer of 1865, President Andrew Johnson, a conservative Unionist from Tennessee, had taken charge of Reconstruction with a plan to restore the Southern states as equals, their political and constitutional status essentially unchanged from what it was before the war.

Under Johnson’s arrangement, the former Confederate states could operate under their antebellum constitutions, the end of slavery notwithstanding. All-white electorates could elect all-white legislatures and send all-white delegations to Washington. Some of these men were, like Johnson, conservative Unionists. Many more were former rebel leaders. Alexander Stephens — of the infamous Cornerstone Speech — was elected to represent Georgia in the Senate in 1866 after he was arrested and imprisoned as the former vice president of the Confederacy in 1865.
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The end of slavery meant the end of the 3/5 compromise, meaning that Southern states would have even larger reference populations for determining representation, giving them even more seats in the House.

To head off this threat, Republicans took two steps. First, they refused to recognize, much less seat, members from the states readmitted under Johnson’s policies. And then, looking to the future, they wrote this prohibition on former Confederate leaders into the Constitution as Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. Republicans would prevent the reascendance of this “slave power” with a blockade of federal office deployed against Southern elites.

If the ultimate goal of Section 3, in other words, was to preserve the integrity of Congress against those who would capture its power and plot against the constitutional order itself, then Representative Bush is right to cite the clause against any members of Congress who turn out to have collaborated with the plotters to overturn the election and whose allies are still fighting to “stop the steal.”
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Ex-MMA Fighter Who Punched a Cop on Jan. 6 Gets Biggest Sentence Yet

Scott Fairlamb has become the first U.S. Capitol rioter to be sentenced for violence against law enforcement, receiving a prison term of 41 months. The New Jersey ex-MMA fighter, who punched a Capitol cop in the face, pleaded guilty to assaulting a police officer and obstructing an official proceeding. His sentence, three months shorter than the one federal prosecutors had sought, is the longest received by a rioter yet.

“I truly regret my actions that day. I have nothing but remorse,” the 44-year-old said on Wednesday, adding that he hoped the judge would “show some mercy on me, sir.” In addition to being filmed attacking an officer, Fairlamb was captured waving a collapsible police baton around, shouting, “What [do] patriots do? We fucking disarm them and we storm the fucking Capitol!”
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Swift Ruling in Jan. 6 Case Tests Trump's Tactic of Delay - The New York Times - "The former president has leveraged the slow judicial process in the past to thwart congressional oversight, but the Jan. 6 case may be different."
On the surface, a judge’s ruling on Tuesday night that Congress can obtain Trump White House files related to the Jan. 6 riot seemed to echo another high-profile ruling in November 2019. In the earlier matter, a judge said a former White House counsel must testify about then-President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to obstruct the Russia investigation.

In both cases, Democratic-controlled House oversight committees issued subpoenas, Mr. Trump sought to stonewall those efforts by invoking constitutional secrecy powers, and Obama-appointed Federal District Court judges — to liberal cheers — ruled against him. Each ruling even made the same catchy declaration: “presidents are not kings.”

But there was a big difference: The White House counsel case two years ago had chewed up three and a half months by the time Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson issued a 120-page opinion to end its first stage. Just 23 days elapsed between Mr. Trump’s filing of the Jan. 6 papers lawsuit and Judge Tanya Chutkan’s ruling against him.
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noting
Judge Rejects Trump’s Bid to Keep Papers Secret in Jan. 6 Inquiry - The New York Times - "But a Trump lawyer has signaled an intent to appeal the ruling, which raises novel issues about an ex-president’s executive privilege powers."
Mr. Trump “does not acknowledge the deference owed to the incumbent president’s judgment. His position that he may override the express will of the executive branch appears to be premised on the notion that his executive power ‘exists in perpetuity,’” Judge Chutkan wrote. “But presidents are not kings, and plaintiff is not president.”

Mr. Trump retained the right to assert that his records were privileged, she added, but Mr. Biden was not obliged to honor that assertion. The incumbent president, she said, is better situated to protect executive branch interests, and Mr. Trump “no longer remains subject to political checks against potential abuse of that power.”
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Does Trump think that he is King George III? King Louis XIV of France? Someone who allegedly stated at one point "l'état, c'est moi" ("I am the state").
 
January 6 committee issues 10 more subpoenas including to Stephen Miller and Kayleigh McEnany - CNNPolitics

  • Nicholas Luna, former President Donald Trump's personal assistant
  • Molly Michael, Trump's special assistant to the President and Oval Office operations coordinator
  • Ben Williamson, Trump's deputy assistant to the President and senior adviser to then-chief of staff Mark Meadows
  • Christopher Liddell, former Trump White House deputy chief of staff
  • John McEntee, Trump's White House personnel director
  • Keith Kellogg, national security adviser to then-Vice President Mike Pence
  • Kayleigh McEnany, former White House press secretary under Trump
  • Stephen Miller, Trump senior adviser
  • Cassidy Hutchinson, special assistant to the President for legislative affairs
  • Kenneth Klukowski, former senior counsel to Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Clark.
The article then went into detail as to why they are wanted. Like
McEnany "made multiple public statements from the White House and elsewhere about purported fraud in the November 2020 election. For example, in the first White House press conference after the election, Ms. McEnany claimed that there were 'very real claims' of fraud that the former President's reelection campaign was pursuing, and said that mail-in voting was something that 'we have identified as being particularly prone to fraud.' At another press conference, Ms. McEnany accused Democrats of 'welcoming fraud' and 'welcoming illegal voting,' " the panel said. In addition, McEnany was reportedly present at times with the former President as he watched the January 6 attack.
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Exclusive: January 6 committee interested in at least 5 people from Pence's inner circle - CNNPolitics

"According to sources familiar with the discussions, some Pence aides are proving more willing to engage with the committee than previously made public."
 
lpetrich said:
Does Trump think that he is King George III? King Louis XIV of France? Someone who allegedly stated at one point "l'état, c'est moi" ("I am the state").
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Unfortunately, I have a bad feeling that the results of this ruling and the subsequent subpoenas in your latest post will amount to nothing.

Sure, a few might consider appearing before the 1/6 committee, but for the most part it will be "so? You can't make me."

Then the feckless Congress and DOJ under Garland will say "well, they said no. What else can we do?"
 
ZiprHead said:
"Goodbye, America!": A California Man Who Allegedly Took Part In The Jan. 6 Capitol Riot Is Seeking Asylum In Belarus

Evan Neumann, wanted for attacking a police officer and entering the Capitol during the insurrection, told a Belarusian state-run TV news channel that he crossed through snake-infested swamps and forests from Ukraine.
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What do you bet he will be on RTV soon
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:LOL:
Neumann said in the news segment titled “Goodbye, America!” that he went to extreme lengths to evade arrest by US law enforcement, sketching out a Catch Me if You Can–style escape.

He said he flew to the EU in March under the guise of a business trip and then traveled to Switzerland by train. From there, he said he drove to Germany and onward to Poland. He then crossed into Ukraine and settled in central Zhytomyr in mid-March. He rented an apartment there for four months, he said, before he decided to flee that country, as well.

Neumann said he left Ukraine after noticing that he was being followed by agents from the Ukrainian security service, the SBU. In August, under the cover of night, he explained, he crossed illegally by foot into Belarus, making his way through swampy forest land and dodging wild boars and snakes.

...
ABC 7 reported that Neumann sold his two-bedroom, one-bath home in Mill Valley in April for $1.3 million. The buyer of Neumann’s home told the news channel, “There was pressure to close. The last we heard is he was in Ukraine.”
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He was involved in a previous election revolt, the 2004 Orange Revolution in Ukraine against the rigged election of Viktor Yanukovych as President. He went on to win an election fairly in 2010, though his rule was overthrown in the Euromaidan Revolution of 2014. "Photos from the criminal complaint also show Neumann among the Jan. 6 mob wearing a scarf from the Orange Revolution."
 
VP Mike Pence And Staff Locked Out Of Capitol Offices On Jan 6 - Access Badges Had Been Deactivated

BREAKING: EXCLUSIVE: THREAD: Pence, his aides, and staff were locked out of their offices in the capitol complex during the insurrection because their access badges had been DEACTIVATED the morning of the attack, according to sources familiar with the incident 1/
According to one source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to an ongoing investigation, Pence's team huddled in a loading dock, unable to access their offices, and started planning contingencies for a constitutional crisis and how to remove the president. 2/
The access badges worked that morning before the mob entered the capitol, but once Pence was removed from the chamber floor, their badges no longer worked. Access was restored later that night after the threat was over. 3/
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news.yahoo.com

Trump defends supporters who threatened to 'hang Mike Pence' on Jan. 6: 'It's common sense'

In an interview with ABC News' Jonathan Karl at Mar-a-Lago weeks after the deadly Capitol riot, the former president vehemently defended supporters who threatened to "hang" his former vice president.
news.yahoo.com news.yahoo.com

They then discussed the Trump supporters who were chanting, “Hang Mike Pence,” during the insurrection.

“Because you heard those chants — that was terrible,” Karl said.

“Well, the people were very angry,” Trump replied.

“They were saying, ‘Hang Mike Pence,’” Karl said.

“Because it’s common sense, Jon,” Trump replied. “It’s common sense that you’re supposed to protect. How can you ... if you know a vote is fraudulent, right? How can you pass on a fraudulent vote to Congress? How can you do that?”
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Liz Cheney condemns ‘false flag’ Capitol attack claim seen in Tucker Carlson film
In an apparent swipe at the Fox News host Tucker Carlson, the anti-Trump Republican Liz Cheney said on Sunday it was “dangerous” and “un-American” to suggest the deadly assault on the US Capitol on 6 January was a “false flag” attack.

Conspiracy theorists say “false flag” attacks are staged by the government to achieve its own ends. A documentary produced by Carlson for the Fox Nation streaming service, Patriot Purge, contains such a suggestion about the Capitol attack.
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  • It wasn't anything at all.
  • It was just people exercising their constitutional rights.
  • It was a false-flag operation!
All arguments used by the same disingenuous people.
 
It was antifa members on a tourist visit to the Capitol in support of an authoritarian President and chanting to hang the VP, just as the Declaration of Independence directs. That makes sense, right?
 
Jimmy Higgins said:
  • It wasn't anything at all.
  • It was just people exercising their constitutional rights.
  • It was a false-flag operation!
All arguments used by the same disingenuous people.
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Also:
it was patriots using their common sense.
The people in jail for Jan. 6 are not nasty anitfa BMl, but righteous political prisoners
 
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