House Select Committee Hearings on Jan. 6 (1 Viewer)
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Optimus Prime
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Cassidy Hutchinson knew better than to put herself in debt to what she called “Trump world.” As she would later testify, “Once you are looped in, especially financially with them, there is no turning back.”
But Hutchinson, who witnessed the final days of the Trump White House from her all-access perch as an aide to Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, had been subpoenaed by the Jan. 6 select committee.
The deadline for turning over documents was looming, and Hutchinson was, she said, “starting to freak out.” One lawyer she consulted said he could assist — then demanded a $150,000 retainer.
So, the young aide, out of work since Donald Trump had left office a full year earlier, initially decided to turn to Trump world for help. Which is how she came to receive a phone call from Stefan Passantino, previously a lawyer in the Trump White House counsel’s office.
“We have you taken care of,” he told Hutchinson. When she asked who would be paying the bills, Passantino demurred — this despite legal ethics rules that let attorneys accept payment from third parties but only with the “informed consent” of their client.
“If you want to know at the end, we’ll let you know, but we’re not telling people where funding is coming from right now,” Hutchinson, in her deposition, recalled him saying. “Like, you’re never going to get a bill for this, so if that’s what you’re worried about.”
If Hutchinson’s live testimony before the select committee was riveting, her deposition testimony, taken several months later and released Thursday, is a page-turner: The Godfather meets John Grisham meets "All the President’s Men." Before, we could only imagine how frightening the situation must have been for the 20-something Trump staffer. Now, we can read of her frantic search for help, and her terror as she contemplated telling the truth.
It is a tale, at least in Hutchinson’s telling, of Trump allies dangling financial support in exchange for unyielding loyalty. “We’re gonna get you a really good job in Trump world. You don’t need to apply other places,” Passantino assured Hutchinson. “We’re gonna get you taken care of. We’re going to keep you in the family.” The goal, as he set it out, was clear: “We just want to focus on protecting the President.”
It’s a story of meek compliance enforced by fear of consequences — and menacing admonitions to remain on board. “They will ruin my life, Mom, if I do anything they don’t want me to do,” Hutchinson told her mother when she offered congratulations about finally securing a lawyer.
The night before her second interview with the committee, an aide to Meadows called Hutchinson about her former boss: “Mark wants me to let you know that he knows you’re loyal and he knows you’ll do the right thing tomorrow and that you’re going to protect him and the boss. You know, he knows that we’re all on the same team and we’re all a family.”……
But Hutchinson, who witnessed the final days of the Trump White House from her all-access perch as an aide to Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, had been subpoenaed by the Jan. 6 select committee.
The deadline for turning over documents was looming, and Hutchinson was, she said, “starting to freak out.” One lawyer she consulted said he could assist — then demanded a $150,000 retainer.
So, the young aide, out of work since Donald Trump had left office a full year earlier, initially decided to turn to Trump world for help. Which is how she came to receive a phone call from Stefan Passantino, previously a lawyer in the Trump White House counsel’s office.
“We have you taken care of,” he told Hutchinson. When she asked who would be paying the bills, Passantino demurred — this despite legal ethics rules that let attorneys accept payment from third parties but only with the “informed consent” of their client.
“If you want to know at the end, we’ll let you know, but we’re not telling people where funding is coming from right now,” Hutchinson, in her deposition, recalled him saying. “Like, you’re never going to get a bill for this, so if that’s what you’re worried about.”
If Hutchinson’s live testimony before the select committee was riveting, her deposition testimony, taken several months later and released Thursday, is a page-turner: The Godfather meets John Grisham meets "All the President’s Men." Before, we could only imagine how frightening the situation must have been for the 20-something Trump staffer. Now, we can read of her frantic search for help, and her terror as she contemplated telling the truth.
It is a tale, at least in Hutchinson’s telling, of Trump allies dangling financial support in exchange for unyielding loyalty. “We’re gonna get you a really good job in Trump world. You don’t need to apply other places,” Passantino assured Hutchinson. “We’re gonna get you taken care of. We’re going to keep you in the family.” The goal, as he set it out, was clear: “We just want to focus on protecting the President.”
It’s a story of meek compliance enforced by fear of consequences — and menacing admonitions to remain on board. “They will ruin my life, Mom, if I do anything they don’t want me to do,” Hutchinson told her mother when she offered congratulations about finally securing a lawyer.
The night before her second interview with the committee, an aide to Meadows called Hutchinson about her former boss: “Mark wants me to let you know that he knows you’re loyal and he knows you’ll do the right thing tomorrow and that you’re going to protect him and the boss. You know, he knows that we’re all on the same team and we’re all a family.”……
DaveXA
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Man, I ❤ Cassidy. She's got more balls than anyone in the Trump camp, and it's really not close.
SFIDC3
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Same here, it takes a lot of courage to go up against a crime family and criminal enterprise….thank god for folks like her and Liz Cheney…..it also really amplifies the multiple sniveling cowards that are part of it…..
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...........And yet, there is something that feels entirely unsatisfying about celebrating this as a landmark win. Two years after we watched the crime happen in plain sight, and the criminals fêted and enriched, we now see criminal charges humbly suggested, for a handful of people?
It’s OK to be frustrated at the limits of the executive summary of the committee’s final report. The report itself remains forthcoming. But just for starters, Monday’s release failed to take seriously the spectacular failures of law enforcement and intelligence agencies; the limited efficacy of ethics referrals for GOP House members who failed to comply with subpoenas; and the culpability of so very many Republicans who have aided and abetted Trump’s big lie for two straight years.
For its own obvious reasons, the committee opted to focus its gaze on Donald Trump and the weirdest weirdos in his orbit, thus sparing some of the worst denialists, liars, and insurrectionists in the GOP from the prospect of serious accountability. But Trump himself was already slipping from “hot” to “not” at meteoric speeds, which is perhaps why the focus on the former (or—as the panel sordidly referred to him Monday—the “ex”) president seems so painfully narrow.
It’s at least possible to surmise that the biggest winners after the committee finished its superb work would be Ron DeSantis, the Murdochs, Liz Cheney, and all those advocating that the GOP dump Donald in favor of literally anyone who can push wildly conservative outcomes without the added peril of his bottomless unhinged-ness. By that token, Monday was a very good day for the GOP, as measured by the opening of yet another offramp for anyone still in search of an offramp.
Consider that Ginni Thomas was nowhere mentioned in the executive summary—nor, aside from an opinion citation, was her husband, the sitting Supreme Court justice who will not recuse himself from cases that involve the Jan. 6 attempted insurrection in which his wife had both participated in the efforts and a vested interest in the outcome. Given the committee’s deference to the Thomases throughout its hearings, no surprises there. But it is still disappointing, for those of us who bought into the idea that the committee could restore some real idea of justice across government.
Instead, no matter what they may tell you about the rule of law and the need for consequences and accountability, absolutely nobody in the GOP as it is currently constituted has any interest in stopping the goose that has laid the conservative legal establishment’s golden egg. Love him or hate him, Thomas has been the single most effective jurist in modern history, and even those conservatives who deplore Trump’s incitement and violence and threats will gleefully turn a blind eye to Thomas’ ethical lapses if it means securing enduring wins on abortion, guns, massive deregulation, and ascendant corporate power.
Virtually nobody who is winning at the Supreme Court in a decades-long conservative legal project aimed at dismantling environmental protections, subverting minority voting rights, and imposing theocratic supremacy is going to take seriously the myriad ethical conflicts and structural failings that plague the current court. Better to keep pretending that Donald Trump is the problem than concede that the problem is actually that both Trump and the Thomases operate as if the law is for the little people, and the law lets them.
Clarence and Ginni Thomas were ultimately untouchable for the Jan. 6 investigators for the same reason they are untouchable for purposes of Supreme Court ethics reform: When you’re a justice, they let you do it. And when you are delivering long-sought victories, even ethical Never Trumpers like Liz Cheney will let you do whatever it takes to deliver the goods.............
It’s OK to be frustrated at the limits of the executive summary of the committee’s final report. The report itself remains forthcoming. But just for starters, Monday’s release failed to take seriously the spectacular failures of law enforcement and intelligence agencies; the limited efficacy of ethics referrals for GOP House members who failed to comply with subpoenas; and the culpability of so very many Republicans who have aided and abetted Trump’s big lie for two straight years.
For its own obvious reasons, the committee opted to focus its gaze on Donald Trump and the weirdest weirdos in his orbit, thus sparing some of the worst denialists, liars, and insurrectionists in the GOP from the prospect of serious accountability. But Trump himself was already slipping from “hot” to “not” at meteoric speeds, which is perhaps why the focus on the former (or—as the panel sordidly referred to him Monday—the “ex”) president seems so painfully narrow.
It’s at least possible to surmise that the biggest winners after the committee finished its superb work would be Ron DeSantis, the Murdochs, Liz Cheney, and all those advocating that the GOP dump Donald in favor of literally anyone who can push wildly conservative outcomes without the added peril of his bottomless unhinged-ness. By that token, Monday was a very good day for the GOP, as measured by the opening of yet another offramp for anyone still in search of an offramp.
Consider that Ginni Thomas was nowhere mentioned in the executive summary—nor, aside from an opinion citation, was her husband, the sitting Supreme Court justice who will not recuse himself from cases that involve the Jan. 6 attempted insurrection in which his wife had both participated in the efforts and a vested interest in the outcome. Given the committee’s deference to the Thomases throughout its hearings, no surprises there. But it is still disappointing, for those of us who bought into the idea that the committee could restore some real idea of justice across government.
Instead, no matter what they may tell you about the rule of law and the need for consequences and accountability, absolutely nobody in the GOP as it is currently constituted has any interest in stopping the goose that has laid the conservative legal establishment’s golden egg. Love him or hate him, Thomas has been the single most effective jurist in modern history, and even those conservatives who deplore Trump’s incitement and violence and threats will gleefully turn a blind eye to Thomas’ ethical lapses if it means securing enduring wins on abortion, guns, massive deregulation, and ascendant corporate power.
Virtually nobody who is winning at the Supreme Court in a decades-long conservative legal project aimed at dismantling environmental protections, subverting minority voting rights, and imposing theocratic supremacy is going to take seriously the myriad ethical conflicts and structural failings that plague the current court. Better to keep pretending that Donald Trump is the problem than concede that the problem is actually that both Trump and the Thomases operate as if the law is for the little people, and the law lets them.
Clarence and Ginni Thomas were ultimately untouchable for the Jan. 6 investigators for the same reason they are untouchable for purposes of Supreme Court ethics reform: When you’re a justice, they let you do it. And when you are delivering long-sought victories, even ethical Never Trumpers like Liz Cheney will let you do whatever it takes to deliver the goods.............
GrandAdmiral
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Seriously, how can an individual afford shirt like this? forking robbery I tell you.
GrandAdmiral
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Man, the Cassie Hutchinson transcripts might end up sending a bunch of folks to jail, including Mark Meadows. Burning documents? Yikes.
BullSheetBuddha
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QAnon conspiracy discussions in the White House
Hutchinson told the committee about several discussions at the White House involving QAnon conspiracies.In her June interview – the fourth she had conducted with the panel – Hutchinson described a discussion about QAnon during a December 2020 meeting with Meadows, then-President Trump and Republican members of Congress, including Georgia GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.
“I remember Marjorie Taylor Greene bringing QAnon up several times, though, in the presence of the president, privately with Mark,” Hutchinson testified. “I remember Mark having a few conversations, too, about – more specific to QAnon stuff and more about the idea that they had with the election and, you know, not as much pertaining to the planning of the January 6th rally.”
In her May interview, Hutchinson said she also remembered Greene bringing up QAnon while Trump was in Georgia for a rally on January 4, 2021.
“Ms. Greene came up and began talking to us about QAnon and QAnon going to the rally, and she had a lot of constituents that are QAnon, and they’ll all be there,” Hutchinson said. “And she was showing him pictures of them traveling up to Washington, D.C., for the rally on the 6th.”
Hutchinson also testified that Trump aide Peter Navarro would bring her materials about the election to pass along to Meadows. “And at one point I had sarcastically said, ‘Oh, is this from your QAnon friends, Peter?’ Because Peter would talk to me frequently about his QAnon friends,” Hutchinson testified.
“He said, ‘Have you looked into it yet, Cass? I think they point out a lot of good ideas. You really need to read this. Make sure the chief sees it,’” she continued.
Rep. Liz Cheney, the panel’s top Republican, asked Hutchinson whether Navarro was being sarcastic about his QAnon friends.
“I did not take it as sarcasm,” Hutchinson said. “Throughout my tenure working for the chief of staff, he would frequently bring in memos and PowerPoints on various policy proposals that – he would then expand on, you know, ‘Q is saying this.’”
https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/27/politics/january-6-transcripts-key-findings/index.html
superchuck500
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MT15
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Tweet was deleted.
superchuck500
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I’ll see why that tweet was deleted. But separately, this is interesting:
FullMonte
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I was watching one of the news shows, and they discussed thst very issue.
They said that prosecuting Meadows is basically impossible. Even if you believe Hutchinson 100%, without evidence of what it was that he burned, there’s no way to prove a crime was committed.
Optimus Prime
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This guy
============
…..Here are some of the highlights from the latest disclosures:
Then-President Donald Trump wanted to trademark the phrase “Rigged Election!” days after Election Day in 2020, according to emails provided by Jared Kushner to the House committee investigating the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the US Capitol.
On November 9, 2020, then-Trump aide Dan Scavino emailed Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, with the request from Trump.
“Hey Jared! POTUS wants to trademark/own rights to below, I don’t know who to see – or ask…I don’t know who to take to,” the email from Scavino reads, according to a transcript of Kushner’s testimony to the committee, which was released by the panel on Friday.
Two phrases were bolded in the email: “Save America PAC!” and “Rigged Election!”………..
www.cnn.com
============
…..Here are some of the highlights from the latest disclosures:
Then-President Donald Trump wanted to trademark the phrase “Rigged Election!” days after Election Day in 2020, according to emails provided by Jared Kushner to the House committee investigating the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the US Capitol.
On November 9, 2020, then-Trump aide Dan Scavino emailed Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, with the request from Trump.
“Hey Jared! POTUS wants to trademark/own rights to below, I don’t know who to see – or ask…I don’t know who to take to,” the email from Scavino reads, according to a transcript of Kushner’s testimony to the committee, which was released by the panel on Friday.
Two phrases were bolded in the email: “Save America PAC!” and “Rigged Election!”………..
Trump wanted to trademark 'Rigged Election!' and other key findings from the latest release from the Jan. 6 panel | CNN Politics
The House January 6 committee on Friday released another wave of witness interview transcripts.
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MT15
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Maybe. But I think it’s possible to prosecute Meadows for other crimes. In fact, I think there’s a halfway decent chance Meadows is cooperating with DOJ right now due to his criminal exposure.
FullMonte
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I agree. I think either Meadows is cooperating wholeheartedly, or he is going to take the fall for everything.
superchuck500
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MT15
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I think this is from their release of documents. Remember that House Rep Loudermilk who led a group of his constituents through the House Office building and Capitol on Jan. 5? It seems at least one of that group was part of the action on the 6th.
SFIDC3
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Not sure of the burden of proof but this Loudermilk buffon hopefully gets whats coming to him....traiterous jackhole....
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