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Donald Trump achieved another first in US presidential history on Thursday night. He was, in front of millions of people, accused by a congressional panel of attempting to overthrow the US government.

January 6th was the culmination of an attempted coup, said Bennie Thompson, chair of the House of Representatives select committee investigating the insurrection at the US Capitol. President Trump summoned the mob, assembled the mob and lit the flame of this attack, added his vice-chair, Liz Cheney.

The political and legal implications could be devastating, just as the Watergate hearings were for President Richard Nixon half a century ago. But today America, and its media, are bitterly divided, and Trump, who once boasted that he could shoot someone and not lose voters, has repeatedly shown that what does not kill him makes him stronger.

The former president wrote defiantly on his Truth Social platform: So the Unselect Committee of political HACKS refuses to play any of the many positive witnesses and statements, refuses to talk of the Election Fraud and Irregularities that took place on a massive scale. Our Country is in such trouble!

Like a criminal trial, the first January 6 hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington clinically outlined the case that will be made against Trump with the help of vivid eyewitness testimony and breathtaking video footage. Although many of the details had previously emerged in media reports, it was nevertheless compelling to hear them woven together in an august setting on primetime television.

Cheney argued that Trump oversaw and coordinated a sophisticated seven-part plan to overturn the 2020 presidential election and block the transfer of power. He encouraged the insurrection, refused to call off the mob and was content for his own vice-president, Mike Pence, to be assassinated for refusing to overturn the election.

And, aware of the rioters chants to hang Mike Pence, the president responded with this sentiment: Maybe our supporters have the right idea. Mike Pence deserves it.

The words of Trumps inner circle, including Pence, were turned against him. There was a clip of former attorney general William Barr saying that Trumps claims of a stolen election were unfounded bullshit, then one of Trumps daughter and senior adviser Ivanka telling the committee: I respected attorney general Barr. I accepted what he was saying.

The sense of family betrayal presumably enraged Trump. It also demonstrated that trusted aides were advising him that he had lost the election fair and square. This could be used to build a criminal case that he pushed the Big Lie of voter fraud knowing it to be just that meaning that he made a deliberate effort to subvert democracy.

The January 6 committee, however, has no power to prosecute Trump or anyone else. That would be a decision for Merrick Garland, the attorney general, at the justice department, and fraught with risks in a polarised environment: Trump allies would doubtless cry foul and accuse him of a politically motivated witch-hunt.

Such a prospect might actually make it more likely that Trump run for president again in 2024 because he knows the justice department would be reluctant to go after an active candidate. He would seek to weaponise such a move while on the campaign trail, casting himself as the victim of a deep state conspiracy, just as he did with the Russia investigation.

If Trump does run, could he win again despite the mountain of damning evidence that now stands in the public record? No one is writing him off just yet. He remains the dominant force in the Republican party, where many continue to push his big lie, a point underlined by its leaderships protests that the hearings are an illegitimate, partisan show trial aimed at deflecting attention from Joe Bidens crises such as inflation and crime.

It is true that there are two Republicans on the January 6 committee, but both are outliers who have been censured by the party. Adam Kinzinger is not seeking re-elecction and Cheney knows her work could well cost her her seat in Wyoming, where a Trump-backed primary challenger is polling strongly against her.

Cheney said on Thursday: I say this to my Republican colleagues who are defending the indefensible: there will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonour will remain.

Meanwhile Fox News, which has long had a marriage of convenience with Trump, did not even broadcast the hearing live. Instead host Tucker Carlson described it as propaganda from the ruling class and told viewers: They are lying and we are not going to help them do it.

It is possible that this and subsequent hearings will break through with a sliver of undecided voters in the middle who had not been paying attention to the drip feed of January 6 stories. But not even Democrats expect it to rescue them in Novembers midterm elections. History will remember Trumps plot against America but memory alone cannot guarantee democracy.

Link:
The January 6 panel said Trump incited an attempted coup. Will it kill him or make him stronger? - The Guardian US

WASHINGTON Former President Donald J. Trump, long known for distancing himself from or tossing aside staff members who contradicted him while he was in the White House, discovered a new target on Friday: his elder daughter.

The morning after the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol played recorded video testimony of his daughter, Ivanka Trump, at its prime-time public hearing, Mr. Trump used his social media website to separate himself from what she had said and to say she was checked out during the final days of his administration.

In the testimony, Ms. Trump said she was influenced by a Dec. 1, 2020, statement by William P. Barr, then the attorney general, that there was no widespread fraud that had altered the outcome of the election. She testified that she respected Mr. Barr and accepted what he was saying.

Ivanka Trump was not involved in looking at, or studying, Election results, Mr. Trump wrote on his social media website, Truth Social, in one of eight messages he posted there in response to the hearing. She had long since checked out and was, in my opinion, only trying to be respectful to Bill Barr and his position as Attorney General (he sucked!).

Ms. Trump was a senior adviser in the White House, and she continued to work in the administration until the end. Her colleagues have recalled her being among those urging White House staff members on election night to fight even as it became clear that her father would most likely lose. Her husband, Jared Kushner, who was also a senior adviser in the White House, attended several meetings about postelection strategy with a range of political and West Wing advisers, as well as lawyers like Rudolph W. Giuliani.

Pushing back on his daughters comments was only one way in which Mr. Trump assailed the hearing, the first in a series of sessions to be heldby the House committee this month.

He denied having responded approvingly to the Hang Mike Pence! chants bellowed about the vice president by some of the rioters at the Capitol on Jan. 6, an account shared during the hearing by Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming and the panels vice chairwoman.

I NEVER said, or even thought of saying, Hang Mike Pence, Mr. Trump wrote on the social media site. This is either a made up story by somebody looking to become a star, or FAKE NEWS!

Ms. Cheney did not say he had used those words, but she quoted testimony that Mr. Trump had responded to the chants by saying that maybe our supporters have the right idea and that Mr. Pence deserves it.

In another post on the site, Mr. Trump described the committee as a totally partisan, POLITICAL WITCH HUNT! And in two other posts, he attacked Mr. Barr, calling him a coward, weak and frightened, stupid and scared stiff of being impeached.

Read this article:
Donald Trump Hits Back at Ivanka Trumps Account That She Accepted His Election Loss - The New York Times

Tonight Congress began its second prosecution of former President Donald Trump for his role in the events of the January 6, 2021, insurrection. The first occurred barely a month after the Capitol siege, when the Senate held an abbreviated impeachment trial that resulted in his acquittal. Last year, the Democrats leading the prosecution chose not to call witnesses. People want to get home for Valentines Day, Senator Chris Coons of Delaware reportedly told the impeachment managers, infuriating those who were hoping that the Senate would hold Trump accountable and bar him from ever running for public office again.

The House Select Committee investigating the January 6 attack is calling witnesses this time aroundlots of them. In its first public hearing, televised in prime time by all major networks except Fox News, the panel aired clips of former Attorney General William Barr recounting how he told Trump that his claims that the 2020 election was stolen were bullshit. The committee interviewed Trumps eldest daughter, Ivanka, who said in a videotaped deposition that she accepted Barrs conclusion about her fathers bogus assertions.

The millions of viewers who likely tuned in to tonights opening salvo saw only a snippet of what the select committee has uncovered. (By design, this first of several hearings represented an opening statement, essentially teasing the revelations to come in future episodes, the next of which is on Monday morning.) The two-hour introduction was neither as dry as most congressional proceedings nor as slick as some had expected when news broke that the committee had hired a former ABC News executive to help plan its showcase.

David Frum: The one witness at the January 6 hearing who matters most

Yet at times, the event resembled a criminal trial as much as it did a standard House hearing. Instead of an endless parade of lawmaker statements, viewers had to endure only two: from Chairman Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi, and Vice Chair Liz Cheney, the Wyoming Republican who last year was removed as a member of the GOP leadership over her vote to impeach Trump. The committee also dispensed with opening statements from its two live witnesses, Capitol Police Officer Caroline Edwards and the documentary filmmaker Nick Quested.

Cheney, who holds a law degree from the University of Chicago, delivered a 30-minute speech previewing the committees case that Trump was at the center of the January 6 riot and the effort to overturn the election that led to it. President Trump summoned the mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack, she said. What followed was perhaps the most compelling evidence the committee presented tonightan 11-minute video compilation of the attack itself, showing the breach of the Capitol and featuring previously unseen police body-cam footage of harrowing hand-to-hand combat between officers and rioters. Weve lost the line! Weve lost the line! an officer is heard shouting at one point as a crowd surged toward the Capitol.

Again and again, the committee returned to Trump and his role in the insurrection. Among the arguments the hearings will advance is that Trump and his allies knew that he lost the election even as he tried to hold on to power. Committee members also spent much of the second half of tonights presentation trying to demonstrate that Trumps tweets and statements after the election were interpreted as motivationand even directionby the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, the two groups who came to Washington on January 6 prepared not merely for peaceful protest but for violence.

The goal of the hearings, aside from bolstering the historical record regarding January 6, is clearly to warn the public about the danger that Trump still presents, both as an individual who may again run for president in two years and as the leader of a movement that does not care much for democracy.

Grant Tudor: January 6 is dangerous shorthand

The structure of tonights openinggiving equal weight to the panels Democratic and Republican leadershad the effect of lending more bipartisanship to the committee than is probably merited. The House GOP officially boycotted the effort, forcing Democrats to name Cheney and Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois as members because they were the only Republicans willing to participate.

Trump is not a defendant, despite the committees best efforts to paint him as one. Its members cant hope to sanction him, only to sway public opinion and, perhaps, nudge the Justice Department to pursue the former president more aggressively than it already has. The panels chances to meaningfully reach the public, too, are limited, because the network with by far the most Trump-voting viewers, Fox News, has chosen not to air the hearings. Congress had its opportunity to hold Trump responsible more than a year ago, when the horror of January 6 was still fresh. The House impeached him and the Senate tried him. But senators chose Valentines Day over witnesses, a quick verdict over a deep and far-reaching investigation.

Now the public will finally get something close to a full accounting of January 6. But is it too late?

Republicans are poised to win back Congress this fall, and Trump, free to run once more, remains the likeliest presidential nominee in 2024. Tonight, I say this to my Republican colleagues who are defending the indefensible, Cheney said at the conclusion of her speech, in an implicit acknowledgment of her lonely place in the party. There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain. The committee is trying to reach people who havent made up their minds about Trump and the ongoing threat to democracyhowever many of them are left.

Link:
Trump Gets the January 6 Trial He Long Dodged - The Atlantic

Former president Donald Trump will testify under oath on 15 July in New York attorney general Letitia Jamess investigation into his business practices, according to a court filing released Wednesday.

His daughter Ivanka Trump and son Donald Trump Jr will also testify.

News of next months testimony is the latest development in the three-year investigation into the former presidents dealings after he failed in an attempt last month to stop her investigation and ended up paying a $110,000 fine.

James has said investigators have found significant evidence of wrongdoing in the investigation, which has homed in on whether the Trump Organization misstated the values of its real estate properties to obtain favorable loans and tax deductions.

The attorney general previously said her investigation discovered evidence suggesting that for more than a decade the companys financial statements relied on misleading asset valuations and other misrepresentations to secure economic benefits.

The Trumps are scheduled to testify beginning on 15 July, but they have until 13 June to ask New York states highest court, the court of appeals, to further delay any testimony. The testimony would be postponed if that court issued a stay.

Trump and his children had earlier argued that testifying in the civil investigation would violate their constitutional rights because their words could be used in a related criminal investigation led by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.

Trump has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing and has not been accused of criminal wrongdoing. He has called the investigation a witch-hunt.

Reuters contributed to this report

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Donald Trump to testify in New York investigation into his business practices - The Guardian US

Yesterday evening, the leaders of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol opened their public hearingshearings that will show, in the words of vice chair Liz Cheney, that Donald Trump oversaw a sophisticated seven-part plan to overturn the presidential election and prevent the transfer of presidential power.

Or, as committee chair Bennie Thompson put it, Donald Trump was at the center of this conspiracy.

Read: Trump gets the January 6 trial he long dodged

The violent assault on the Capitol was the culmination of that effort; Trump summoned the mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack, Cheney said. And he reveled in what he had done. The more carnage, the better.

That Donald Trump acted the way he did was hardly a surprise; some of us had been warning about his borderless corruptions and disordered personality since before he became president. Its hard to imagine that theres any ethical line this broken, embittered, vindictive man wouldnt cross, including telling White House staff that Vice President Mike Pence deserved to be hanged by the violent mob that stormed the Capitol, because Pence wouldnt refuse to certify the election.

But the story of the Trump presidency isnt only about the corruptions and delusions of one man; its also about the party he represents. Trump recast the Republican Party, of which I was long a proud member, in his image. His imprint on the GOP is, in important respects, even greater than Ronald Reagans, despite Reagan being a successful two-term president.

Other presidents have been accused of wrongdoing, even high crimes and misdemeanors, Peter Baker wrote in The New York Times, but the case against Donald J. Trump mounted by the bipartisan House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol described not just a rogue president but a would-be autocrat willing to shred the Constitution to hang onto power at all costs.

It was bad enough that many Republicans were complicit in Trumps wrongdoings when he was president; that they continue to be complicit 17 months after Trump left the presidency is an even more damning indictment. Theyve continued to embrace Trump even though hes a loser.

Republicans stayed loyal to Richard Nixon far longer than they should have, but at least they abandoned him after the smoking gun tape was released that proved his involvement in the Watergate cover-up. What Trump has done is worse even than what Nixon did and yet Republicansdespite the case against Trump being far more comprehensive and detailed than we knew in the immediate aftermath of January 6continue to propagate his lies and either defend his seditious conduct or act as if it never happened. Its old news, were told. Nothing to see here. Time to move on.

Not so fast.

The sheer scale of Donald Trumps depravity is unmatched in the history of the American presidency, and the Republican Partythe self-described party of law and order and constitutional conservatives, of morality and traditional values, of patriotism and Lee Greenwood songsmade it possible. It gave Trump cover when he needed it. It attacked his critics when he demanded it. It embraced his nihilistic ethic. It amplified his lies. When House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthya man who for a few fleeting hours after the January 6 insurrection dared to speak critically of Donald Trumptraveled to Mar-a-Lago a few days later to kiss his ring, it was an act of self-abasement that was representative of his party, his morally desolate party.

David Frum: The one witness at the January 6 hearing who matters most

Make no mistake: Republicans are the co-creators of Trumps corrupt and unconstitutional enterprise. The great majority of them are still afraid to break fully with him. They consider those who have, like Liz Cheney, to be traitors to the party. They hate Cheney because she continues to hold up a mirror to them. They want to look away. She wont let them.

Perhaps the most withering sentences of Cheneys extraordinary presentation last night were these: Tonight, I say this to my Republican colleagues who are defending the indefensible: There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain.

Those in the Republican Party and on the American right who defended Trump and continue to do sowho went silent in the face of his transgressions, who rationalized their weakness, who went along for the ride for the sake of powermust know, deep in their hearts, that what she said is true. And it will always be true.

Their dishonor is indelible.

Read more from the original source:
The Moral Desolation of the GOP - The Atlantic