Daniel Ly

Now that the first batch of hearings from the Select Committee are done, we are starting to get “What did we learn?” stories.

Hearing 1: By December 2020, Trump knew he had lost. He had been told that by many people in his administration and even his own daughter Ivanka. His claim that there was fraud was shot down by his own attorney general, Bill Barr, who said he had investigated and there was no significant fraud. Nevertheless, Trump continued to say he won.

Hearing 2: On Election Night, a drunk Rudy Giuliani told Trump to declare victory, which Trump did, despite having many of his own people tell him that millions of (largely Democratic) absentee ballots hadn’t been counted yet. As Trump kept coming up with more crazy theories, Acting Deputy AG Richard Donoghue kept shooting them down but Trump kept insisting they were true.

Hearing 3: This one focused on John Eastman’s plan to have Mike Pence throw out electoral votes for Joe Biden and declare Trump the winner. Eastman was told by many people that such a move would result in violence in the streets. Eastman didn’t care and neither did Trump. When the true story leaked to The New York Times, Trump vigorously denied it, despite knowing that it was true. White House lawyer Eric Herschmann told Eastman to get the best criminal defense lawyer he could because he was going to need it. Eastman’s response was to ask for a pardon (which he didn’t get). Eastman might be the easiest of Trump’s cronies to convict now because there is a paper trail (a letter he wrote asking state legislatures to appoint their own electors) and numerous witnesses to what he said and did. If he were to flip to save his own neck after being indicted, he could easily nail Trump to the wall.

Hearing 4: This one was about Trump’s efforts to intimidate state and local officials, from the level of poll workers like Shaye Moss up to the level of Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers ® and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger ®. A focus here was the phony (and illegal) slate of electors Giuliani and his helpers had put together in Arizona, Georgia, and other states.

Hearing 5: A last-ditch effort by Trump was to try to replace Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen with environmental lawyer Jeffrey Clark, who was prepared to do anything Trump told him to do, like seizing all the voting machines. Rosen resisted with everything he had. Herschmann summarized this by telling Clark: “Good, you fu**ing a**hole, congratulations, you just admitted that the first step or act you would take as attorney general would be committing a felony.” Donoghue was more concise: “We’ll call you when there’s an oil spill.”

Hearing 6: This day belonged entirely to Cassidy Hutchinson, Mark Meadows’ then chief-of-staff. She made it clear that the attack on the Capitol was not a spontaneous uprising. Trump and Giuliani had planned it days in advance. Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, White House Counsel Pat Cipollone, and everyone else in the White House knew about it. Cipollone, among others, knew the goal was illegal (e.g., was obstruction of justice and defrauding the electoral count) and tried to dissuade everyone from pulling it off. Hutchinson also said that in a December lunch meeting when Barr again told Trump that there was no fraud, Trump was so angry he threw his lunch at the wall, covering it with ketchup. She also personally heard Trump ask that metal detectors be removed from the rally right before the attack on the capitol. Trump said “I don’t fucking care if they have weapons. They’re not here to hurt me. Take the fucking mags away. Let my people in. They can march to the Capitol from here. Let the people in.“

Hearing 7: This hearing focused to the “unhinged” White House meeting in December when Trump announced that he was going to appoint Sidney Powell special counsel and have her seize the voting machines. When all the lawyers, including Herschmann and Cipollone, told him that declaring martial law and seizing the machines was illegal, he called them a bunch of pussies. As this hearing ended, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) casually mentioned that Trump may have engaged in witness tampering, a federal crime.

Hearing 8: Finally, the focus was on the actual coup attempt. The hearing showed beyond any doubt that while it was going on, Trump watched it happily on Fox News, despite entreaties from his staff, Republicans in Congress, and his family to tell the rioters to go home. The hearing made it clear that Trump wanted the coup to succeed and if Mike Pence got killed in the process, well, he deserved it. Anyone who watched the hearing learned that Trump was not befuddled or confused or paralyzed by what he saw on TV. He liked it and actively wanted it to continue and to succeed in stopping the electoral count. He even sent out a tweet encouraging the mob.

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