Jan 6 select committee

Bon courage!

Some members of the party that hasn’t managed to figure out how to stiffen its spine in the face of Donald Trump for seven years are apparently privately hoping that the Democrats and two Republicans on the Jan. 6 select committee will do their dirty work for them.

The New York Times Magazine published a piece this afternoon that reveals new information about Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and the extent to which she was involved in Big Lie-related events leading up to, surrounding and following Jan. 6.

Ginni Thomas’ conservative activism has been eyebrow-raising for years, but in recent months we’ve seen several new in-depth reports that delve deeply into her work and the conflicts of interest they could present for Justice Thomas’ role on the high Court, especially in cases related to the Jan. 6 insurrection and efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

The only two Republicans on the Jan. 6 Committee have responded to calls made by a member of their own party — Newt Gingrich — suggesting that they, and the rest of the panel, should be jailed for the committee’s investigative work.

At this point, it’s par for the course for Gingrich to traffic in Trumpian outrage, as Josh Marshall outlined here. But it’s also an illustration of the Republican Party’s ongoing divide and the ways in which the party as a whole has responded to the bombastic individual who commandeered it for his own ends.

Longtime Rudy Giuliani ally Bernie Kerik plans to show up for a deposition in front of the Jan. 6 select committee this week. But he might not answer every question that is asked of him.

Thanks to Peter Navarro’s new memoir, we now have a first-person account of just how President Trump and his closest friends planned to do a coup on Jan. 6.

But it’s not, Navarro claims, the one we saw violently come into fruition.

TPM detailed some of the latest reports on Navarro’s new book as well as recent interviews with the former White House trade adviser here. But a reasonable conclusion to draw about the purpose of Navarro’s latest press tour is a relatively simple one: He’s attempting to signal that Trump and his team couldn’t possibly be blamed for the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection because that attack actually scuttled their plans for a different, friendlier coup.

As the first anniversary of the insurrection approaches, the Jan. 6 committee will probably vote later this evening to refer Mark Meadows for prosecution for contempt of Congress. It’s a proper and necessary step. But it is also singularly unsatisfying and insufficient.

A contempt conviction and a modest jail term for Meadows or Steven Bannon or any other Trumpster determined not to cooperate with Congress doesn’t produce either justice or a warm feeling of schadenfreude. Only a criminal investigation by the Justice Department can bring to bear the resources and stiff punishments that will do justice to the severity of what happened in 2020 and culminated on Jan. 6.

Federal appeals court finds Trump’s claims of executive privilege to block a subpoena from the Jan. 6 committee to be utterly without merit.