June 17, 2022
INDICTMENT:
A former judge's devastating verdict on Donald Trump's scheming against American democracy (Scot Lehigh, June 16, 2022, Boston Globe)
It may be the most important declaration to date in the US House of Representatives' hearings on Jan. 6 -- and it's not a revelation about scheming or skulduggery but rather a solemn plea to all Americans by a revered former judge."No American ought to turn away from January 6, 2021, until all of America comes to grips with what befell our country that day, and we decide what we want for our democracy from this day forward," former federal appeals court judge J. Michael Luttig declared in a written statement to the House select committee investigating Jan. 6. [...]As Luttig said in his written statement, part of which he repeated in oral testimony on Thursday: "It is breathtaking that these arguments even were conceived, let alone entertained by the President of the United States at that perilous moment in history. Had the Vice President of the United States obeyed the President of the United States, America would immediately have been plunged into what would have been tantamount to a revolution within a paralyzing constitutional crisis."We also learned from Greg Jacob, the vice president's former legal counsel, that even John Eastman, the bizarre right-wing lawyer who hatched the plot to have Pence reject the Electoral College results, realized that action wouldn't survive US Supreme Court scrutiny if constitutionally reviewed by the court. But according to former Trump White House lawyer Eric Herschmann, Eastman was willing to see violence in the streets if that's what it took to keep Trump in power.
Trump unleashed mob after VP rejected election plot: probe (AFP, June 16, 2022)
A desperate Trump had turned to Pence for help after dozens of legal challenges against the election were dismissed in courts across the land.The defeated president used rally speeches and Twitter to exert intense pressure on his deputy to abuse his position as president of the Senate and reject the election results.Members of Trump's family were in the Oval Office on January 6 when Trump had a "heated" phone call with Pence, according to first daughter Ivanka Trump's deposition, aired at the hearing.She said Trump took "a different tone" than she'd heard him use before.Nicholas Luna, a former assistant to Trump, recalled in his own deposition: "I remember hearing the word 'wimp.'"During his "Stop the Steal" rally later that day, Trump referenced Pence numerous times as he told his supporters to march on the Capitol and "fight like hell."Trump's original speech didn't mention Pence but he ad-libbed to berate his vice president in a move Democratic committee member Pete Aguilar said helped incite the insurrection and the threats against Pence.But Pence resisted, releasing a letter to Congress saying the vice president had no "unilateral authority" to overturn election counts.Aguilar said an informant from the neofascist Proud Boys told the FBI the group would have killed Pence given the opportunity.The California congressman said the mob storming the Capitol came within 40 feet (12 meters) of Pence and to "make no mistake about the fact that the vice president's life was in danger."Trump's chief of staff Mark Meadows told him about the violence erupting at the Capitol but the president tweeted anyway that Pence did not have the "courage" to overturn the election, aides told investigators in videotaped depositions.Immediately after the tweet, the crowds at the Capitol surged forward, the committee said.The mob threatened to hang Pence for failing to cooperate as they stormed the Capitol, even erecting a gallows in front of the building."What the former president was willing to sacrifice -- potentially the vice president -- in order to stay in power is pretty jarring," Aguilar said.
Posted by Orrin Judd at June 17, 2022 6:07 AM