For most of us this is not new information. But the testimony late this afternoon brings out in a particularly vivid way how little Trump cared about the fate of the country or the constitution or really anything else besides what he saw as his own political well-being. That’s clear enough. But beyond that he had a hard time even understanding the question. “What do I have to lose?” the President asked, according to the participants in the Oval Office meeting. It’s basically, why not burn the country down? What do I have to lose?

Again, this is not a surprise to most of us. But I haven’t seen it captured so vividly.

A new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is live! This week, Josh and Kate discuss the latest Jan. 6 hearing and the Senate gun deal.

You can listen to the new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast here.

Point 1: If you’re watching the hearings today, consider and remember this: Let’s give these guys credit. They’re conservatives. Trump appointees. But they held the line. They refused to play ball under a lot of pressure. But authorizing law enforcement investigations of palpably absurd stories is itself really, really bad. That’s the basis of the great majority of law enforcement corruption: standing up bogus investigations to impugn the reputations or otherwise hurt people. That’s really bad on many, many fronts. In the situation in which these guys found themselves I think there’s a good argument that they went with the least bad option. But that option is itself really, really bad.

Point 2: One of the things we’re seeing today is this effort to stock new unknown loyalists into the executive departments after it was already clear the President had lost and that it was a lame duck administration. We’ve known a lot of this story. But we found out significantly more today. The only time this happens in normal situations is that you sometimes have caretaker appointees come in because the top appointee leaves before the President’s last day in office. Sometimes it’s simply to burnish someones future resume. They can say they were “acting such and such” for a brief time. Not great maybe but essentially no harm. But it doesn’t work like this. When they were already only in a caretaker role they were restocking the departments to further the coup.

But here’s another point. It wasn’t only at DOJ. There was something very similar happening at the Pentagon. Those new appointees don’t seem to have played direct roles in the coup as it played, though I think that’s still an open question. But it sure seemed like they might at the time. At the end of the day coups almost always come down to control of the armed forces.

ABC is reporting that federal agents searched former Trump DOJ official Jeffrey Clark’s home yesterday morning.

This and other articles are among the first I’ve seen that make me think there will be prosecutions of individuals involved in the attempted 2020 presidential election coup. This one is from the Post and reports a new round of subpoenas and what appear to be court-ordered searches of various individuals involved in the “fake elector” scheme. Let me note a couple points about that part of the coup conspiracy.

A new report in the Washington Post today indicates the Justice Department might be expanding the scope of its focus on the fake Trump electors scheme, zeroing in on the people involved in the plot who may have intended to follow through or tried to follow through with the scheme.

Previous reports have revealed the DOJ was looking at the fake electors plot, but the bureau was reportedly mostly in talks with people who sounded the alarm about the scheme — which was a key layer of MAGAland’s campaign to keep Trump in power despite losing the election.

Ron Johnson has managed to win two elections in Wisconsin – both of which were races Democrats were optimistic about winning. But this new poll number out of Wisconsin is pretty striking on a number of counts.

Here are the numbers.

One of the more interesting things to come out of the Jan. 6th hearings is the greater detail about the involvement of members of Congress. One detail yesterday was the involvement of Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) in the fake electors plot. He somewhat lamely passed it off as the rogue behavior of an unnamed intern. Here’s one of several videos of Johnson yesterday rushing away from reporters trying to avoid questions.

In case you missed it, here is a recording of our Twitter Space. John Light, Josh Kovensky and Matt Shuham broke down today’s Jan. 6 House select committee hearing. Listen at the link below, and follow us on Twitter @TPM to join the next one!

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