Earlier this month, Ginni Thomas, wife of Justice Clarence Thomas, made a big show of her willingness and desire to march right up to Capitol Hill and clear her good name before the Jan. 6th investigation committee. Yesterday, her lawyer said the committee just turns out to be too biased. So she won’t be testifying after all.
Two White House security officials who allegedly scuffled with the President in the presidential limousine are now denying through intermediaries what Cassidy Hutchinson said under oath in yesterday’s hearing. But Ginni Thomas’s switcheroo is a good reminder that talk — or rather claims through intermediaries — is cheap. People who claim they are just champing at the bit to testify usually end up refusing to testify.
The testimony of Cassidy Hutchinson moved us decisively beyond questions of incitement and dereliction of duty by President Trump.
The narrative crafted by the Jan. 6 committee during Tuesday’s hearing was that Trump wasn’t a mere bystander or a hapless egomaniac nursing his personal grievances or a ineffectual leader slow to respond to the moment.
Trump, in the committee’s telling, was the prime architect, mover, instigator and cheerleader for the attempted coup. The well-worn trope that Trump lit the fuse seems anemic and pathetic now. He did far more than light the fuse.
To extend the metaphor, Trump called for the bomb-making, wanted to take down the magnetometers to allow the bombthrowers in to his rally, directed the bombthrowers from his rally toward the Capitol, tried to join the bombthrowers so he could waltz into the House chamber himself, rooted for the bombthrowers from the West Wing, and hindered the federal government and law enforcement from responding adequately to the bombthrowers. In short, Trump was a bombthrower.
Perhaps most tellingly, his own chief of staff, as rendered in Hutchinson’s testimony, seemed to know it all along. At best, Mark Meadows resigned himself to it and at worst he enabled and facilitated it. I find it a strained interpretation that he was merely resigned to it.
Not everyone gets it yet. It’s going to take some time to sink in. Trump wasn’t unaware or indifferent. He wasn’t passive or disengaged. He was an active, willing, aggressive, persistent participant in Jan. 6.
I felt anger rising inside of me as the the hearing pulled back the curtain on Jan. 6 that Merrick Garland’s DOJ has been as slow off the mark as it has. Eighteen months after the barely failed coup the Justice Department is only now getting its act together to reach beyond the rioters to the higher ups. Evidence gets lost. Memories grow stale. The sense of urgency fades. Delay makes building and prosecuting a case harder. Time is of the absolute essence.
I don’t know about you, but by the time I was 8 years old I had stopped throwing tantrums over my attorney general refusing to play along with my coup attempt:
Like A Mob Boss
It came at the very end of yesterday’s hearing, past the peak of the drama of Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony, but don’t sleep on the possible obstruction of Congress case Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) was pressing against Trump World:
We commonly ask witnesses connected to Trump whether they have been contacted by anyone attempting to impact testimony.
— January 6th Committee (@January6thCmte) June 28, 2022
How The Other Half Lives
I’m not going to fall down this rabbit hole, but you should be aware that an entire cottage industry sprung up overnight focused on how the layout of the presidential limo PROVES Cassidy Hutchinson was lying about Trump assaulting his Secret Service agent and lunging for the steering wheel.
Cassidy Hutchinson lied and the @January6thCmte held a special hearing today to broadcast her lies.
In ‘23, every single one of them need to be held accountable for what they are putting Pres Trump, his admin, & Republicans through on the people’s dime.
— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) June 28, 2022
Hold Off On The Popcorn
Ginni Thomas won’t testify before the Jan. 6 committee, her lawyer says.
Tina Peters Flames Out In Colorado
The Trump-loving county clerk under indictment for all sorts of 2020 election nonsense fell to third place in the latest tally of the GOP primary to become Colorado’s top election official.
Rodney Davis Falls To Mary Miller In Illinois
Redistricting forced two GOP incumbents to square off in a new very conservative district, where the MAGA-loving Mary Miller defeated Rodney Davis, who hadn’t been ardent enough in his cultish worship of Trump. Davis had voted for a Jan. 6 commission (which never came to be) and voted to certify Biden’s 2020 win.
Marie Newman Loses To Sean Casten in Illinois
Illinois redistricting stuck two Dem incumbents in the same district, where Rep. Sean Casten (D) knocked off Rep. Marie Newman (D) in the Democratic primary.
Andrew Giuliani Loses NY Guv Bid
Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY) won the GOP primary for governor of New York, knocking off Rudy Giuliani’s on Andrew. It wasn’t even close. Zeldin will face Gov. Kathy Hochul in the fall general election. This was the race that featured the “backslap heard round the world.”
Rep. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) and former state House Speaker T.W. Shannon advanced to a runoff for the GOP nomination to fill the seat of the retiring Sen. James Inhoff (R).
Abortion Rights GOPer Wins In Colorado
Businessman Joe O’Dea, the rare breed of Republican who supports abortion rights, won the GOP primary to face off against Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO) in the fall. Some Democratic outside groups had been touting O’Dea’s more conservative opponent in hopes of setting up a general election matchup more favorable to Bennet.
Former Rep. Jeff Fortenberry (R-NE) was sentenced to two years of probation for lying to FBI agents about illegal contributions to his 2016 reelection campaign. Prosecutors had sought six months of jail time.
Tina Peters, the Trump-supporting county clerk facing multiple felony charges for allegedly compromising the security of her own election office, lost her bid to be Colorado’s next secretary of state Tuesday.
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Alex Holder, the British documentary filmmaker who had close access to then-President Trump and his inner circle before and after Jan. 6, is reportedly expected to comply in an investigation looking into Trump’s unsuccessful efforts to subvert the 2020 presidential election results in Georgia, a source with knowledge of the situation told CNN.
If you followed any or all of today’s Jan. 6 Committee hearing, you’ll know it was stuffed with some damning revelations about how things went down behind the scenes at the White House and in Trump’s inner circle during the Jan. 6 insurrection and in the days leading up to it.
A number of you have written in to say about the hearings, “No, that wasn’t the big deal. This other thing was the big deal!” In almost every case I find myself agreeing with you. What it comes down to is there was just a huge amount of critical new detail in Hutchinson’s testimony. And it was a challenge to evaluate the significance of it all in real time or organize it on a rank of significance. So TPM Reader KB notes that all the stuff about a war room at the Willard with Rudy and the top crazies starts appearing in a very, very different light if the plan was that Trump was going to go to the Capitol to in some sense lead the confrontation. It definitely seems like that wasn’t just a possibility or something that was discussed but rather definitely Trump’s plan and, one would imagine, what Rudy and his crew thought was going to happen.
The Jan. 6 Committee just finished a groundbreaking hearing with Cassidy Hutchinson, a former top aide to White House chief of staff Mark Meadows who interacted with top White House and Trump campaign figures in the days leading up to the Capitol attack, and during the attack itself.
