The America’s Future Starts Now Report: Interview with Natalie Adona, Clerk-Recorder Elect, in Nevada County, California

Editor’s Note: This roundup is part of the CNN Opinion series “America’s Future Starts Now,” in which people share how they have been affected by the biggest issues facing the nation and experts offer their proposed solutions. The authors have their own views expressed in these commentaries. CNN has more opinion.

Three current and retired election workers – from California, Michigan and Pennsylvania, respectively – share both the threats they have faced in the line of duty and the steps they have taken to protect our elections moving forward.

I helped run the voting process in Nevada County on Election Day in 2020 and found it quiet and calm. Most voters in this purple county had already cast their ballots by mail. Those who voted in-person cast their ballots in an orderly and respectful fashion.

I was a target of the elections deniers’ frustration. They made up accusations that I had broken state campaign finance laws, had lied about my work experience, and were involved in corruption. A mailer was distributed across the county, in which I was subjected to racist bile. At one time, I had to get a restraining order against one individual who was threatening me.

That said, I remain firmly committed to restoring Americans’ faith in US democracy, and so this year I left a 32-year career in government and joined the Committee for Safe and Secure Elections (CSSE), a cross-partisan organization made up of current and former election officials and law enforcement officers with the shared goal of protecting election officials and workers.

Stakeholders from both sides of the political aisle must make sure our elections are free and fair. If you think that is impossible, let an election official show you how to do it.

Natalie Adona is the clerk-recorder elect, a non-partisan office, in Nevada County, California. She is a member of the California Association of Clerks. Adona is a member of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Elections Task Force, an Advisory Board member for the Election Official Legal Defense Network, an editorial board member for the Journal of Election Administration Research and Practice, and a participant in the Issue. The campaign is called “Faces of Democracy”.

When my first death threat threatened I wouldn’t have the courage to admit I didn’t – but I had a courage to have my hair done

Democrats were able to vote by mail. When the election results came in on election night, Trump was winning Pennsylvania and a number of other battleground states. Early Wednesday morning, Trump prematurely declared victory. As mail-in ballots were counted, his margin had begun to close. Trump and his legal team attempted to stop the count but were unsuccessful each time.

By week’s end, Biden would take the lead and demonstrations in and around Philadelphia would become violent. The exercise concluded that there was no end in sight as civil riots, legal action and intense scrutiny loom.

In this scenario, the top officials in the room expressed serious concern. The scenario felt plausible even as extreme as it sounded.

Wanting to set the record straight, I posted a video on Twitter to explain what had really happened – an innocent mistake, swiftly fixed, rather than some form of intentional voter fraud. After my first death threat, I unleashed a wave of hate. Phrases like “we will f—ing take you out!”, and “your family!” were contained in the voicemail. [Expletive] your life!” and “We will surround you when you least expect it.”

Two plain-clothes Philadelphia police officers were assigned to follow me wherever I went after I received a threat that turned out to be credible. I didn’t want to have to explain to my hairdresser who my escort were, so I avoided getting my hair done.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/13/opinions/us-election-workers-voting-threats-roundup/index.html

Election Day 2019: The Democrat Lisa Deeley, Commissioner of Philadelphia, faces the 2020 Russian Referendum: Where did the last 22,000 votes went?

Election Day is a very important day in my life. My mother was the local committee person in our neighborhood. I followed the polls on Election Day since she was a single mom. Back then, our polling place was a barber shop, where I would spend hours spinning on a leather barber’s chair taking it all in.

My barber shop is like my mother’s. We need to invest in our teachers and schools, so they can better teach civics education and impart on young people just how precious democratic ideals truly are.

Lisa Deeley, a Democrat, is the chairwoman of the Philadelphia City Commissioners, a three-member bipartisan board of elected officials in charge of elections and voter registration for the city of Philadelphia.

Much of it dates back to 2016, when a hand recount of the election results in Michigan was requested (then halted), and the Russian attempt to interfere in our politics and social media – ripe with disinformation and misinformation about the presidential election – began to play a larger role in electoral politics.

It made some doubt the election process. Four years later, there was doubt about the process after it started as a seed.

The November 2020 election made my worst fears come true. I had just overseen the administration of the most challenging election of my career, and all eyes were on Michigan. Unfortunately, my team and I made an error in resubmitting an absentee voter file on election night – a mistake we quickly caught and corrected the morning after the election.

However, several days later, a leading national figure held a press conference in Michigan and misrepresented what had happened, falsely claiming that 2,000 votes for one presidential candidate had gone to another – thus pushing my colleagues and I into the national spotlight.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/13/opinions/us-election-workers-voting-threats-roundup/index.html

Report of the Committee on Investigations of the 2020 Presidential Incident Coupling to Incite Insurrection and Aid or Comfort to Insurrectionists

The committee has developed a five-step process that election officials and law enforcement can follow to better prepare for elections. It states that election officials and law enforcement should meet, share their situational knowledge, agree on a vision for establishing order and safety around election spaces, plan for a variety of possible disturbance scenarios and practice their responses ahead of each election.

It is my hope that more election officials follow our guidelines, so that public servants can once again do their jobs without fearing for their lives.

Tina Barton is the former appointed city clerk of Rochester Hills, Michigan, and 2020 Oakland county clerk Republican candidate. She works for The Elections Group as a senior election expert.

The House select committee that investigated January 6, 2021, showed a ton of evidence and documentation about the actions of the former President Donald Trump, who attempted to overturn the result of the 2020 election and resulted in violence at the US Capitol.

The House committee outlined a powerful case against Mr. Trump and others, including the promotion of false electoral slates. The committee also recommended prosecution of Mr. Trump on charges of inciting insurrection and giving aid or comfort to insurrectionists — a charge unseen since the Civil War. The referrals clearly make clear to the prosecutors and Americans that the attempted coup was very dangerous and that our system was vulnerable to such assaults.

The jury was not sure what to make of the testimony the panel gave at the end of its evidentiary hearings. After four months of hearings with plenty of evidence for their claims, Americans who had blamed Mr. Trump came away with more evidence than those who started out in his camp.

The relatively little movement in public opinion since the hearings opened in June, at least as measured by an array of polls, underscored the calcification of American politics in recent years. Voters have been locked into their beliefs, seemingly immune to conflicting information. Mr. Trump’s supporters for the most part have remained loyal to him, brushing off the congressional investigation as the partisan exercise he claims it to be.

A former president who tried to overturn a free and fair election to hang onto power in defiance of the voters remains the favorite to win the party’s nomination and the odds-on favorite to be the next president. While the committee extensively documented the plot for history’s sake, it could not enforce accountability for it.

The Select Committee will conduct a thorough investigation into the attack on the United States Capitol. Without objection, the chair is authorized to declare the committee in recess at any point. Pursuant to House Deposition Authority Regulation 10, the chair announces the committee’s approval to release the deposition material presented during today’s hearing.

May God bless the US of America. Four months ago, this committee started to present our findings to you, the American people. We knew from the beginning that some people would wrongly assume the committee’s investigation was partisan.

To hear testimony with an open mind, listen to evidence and to let the facts speak for themselves is what I asked those who were skeptical of our work to do. Over the course of these hearings, the evidence has proven that there were a multipart plan led by former President Donald Trump to overturn the 2020 election.

We now know more about President Trump’s intention for election night. The evidence shows that his false victory speech was planned well in advance before any votes had been counted. It was a premeditated plan by the President to declare victory no matter what the actual result was. He made a plan to stay in office before Election Day. The staff of the Vice President was concerned that Donald Trump might do something on election night.

Donald Trump’s actions after the 2020 election are something no president has done before in our country. In a staggering betrayal of his oath, Donald Trump attempted a plan that led to an attack on a pillar of our democracy. It’s still hard to believe, but the facts and testimony are clear, consistent, and undisputed.

How do we know this? How can we provide such a clear picture of what happened? We have gathered documentary evidence, which we’ve made accessible to the American people, which is why we presented to you through these proceedings.

The committee found that Roger Stone, one of the key allies of Donald Trump, had contact with militant right-wing extremists and the Proud Boys. There were warnings from the Secret Service that there was a serious threat of violence against the Capitol.

Who has that been? The Republican state officials who worked for Donald Trump for many years, the Republican electors, the chair of the Republican National Committee, and the appointees who served in the most senior positions in the Justice Department are some of the people who have worked for him.

I’ve been in Congress for a long time. I can tell you it’s tough for any Congressional investigation to obtain evidence like what we received, least of all such a detailed view into a president’s inner circle. I would like to be clear. Some witnesses were not happy to talk to us. The people put up a fight.

A Special Committee Business Meeting on President Donald Trump’s December 6th Activation: What Do We Know and How Do We Can Do About It?

There’s one more difference about today. Pursuant to the notice circulated prior to today’s proceedings, we are convened today not as a hearing but as a formal committee business meeting so that, in addition to presenting evidence, we can potentially hold a committee vote on further investigative action based upon that evidence.

But we were able to obtain nearly one million emails, recordings, and other electronic records from the Secret Service. Over the month of August, the select committee began its review of hundreds of thousands of pages and multiple hours of that material, providing substantial new evidence about what happened on January 6th and the days leading up to it. That review continues.

The Department of Justice has been very active in pursuing some of the issues identified in previous hearings. Our role isn’t to make decisions about prosecutions, we realize that and we decide when to make criminal referrals to the DOJ.

The preamble to the Constitution is supposed to establish justice. And our nation’s judiciary and our US Department of Justice have that responsibility. A key element of this committee’s responsibility is to propose reforms to prevent January 6th from ever happening again. The House has passed a bill that will change the Electoral Count Act to make sure no other future attempts to overturn an election are successful.

He was personally and substantially involved in all of it. Exactly how did one man cause all of this? Today we will focus on President Trump’s state of mind, his intent, his motivations, and how he spurred others to do his bidding, and how another January 6th could happen again if we do not take necessary action to prevent it. The following points are what I would suggest as your focus as you view our evidence today.

This was done with both the President’s knowledge as well as his direct participation. Ronna McDaniel, Chair of the Republican National Committee, testified before this committee that President Trump and his attorney Dr. John Eastman called her and asked her to arrange for the fake electors to meet and rehearse the process of casting their fake votes.

Many of those who stepped forward to help, including Rudy Giuliani, knew they never had real evidence sufficient to change the election results. And on the evening of January 5th, they admitted they were still trying to find that phantom evidence. Mr. Giuliani’s license to practice law was suspended as a result of his false claims of election fraud.

The President Trump Disaster and the American Crime on January 6, 2016: How President Trump Dwarfs Can’t Go Along with the Laws

As security assistance began to arrive at the Capitol, President Trump finally gave a directive at 4:17 p.m. So after multiple hours of rioting and more than 100 serious injuries suffered by our law enforcement officers, the crowd finally began to disperse.

Please consider who had a hand in stopping President Trump’s attempts to change the outcome of the election, including the Department of Justice, White House staff, and State Republican officials.

All of these people had a hand in stopping Donald Trump. This leads us to a key question. Why would Americans assume that our Constitution and our institutions and our republic are invulnerable to another attack? Why would we assume that those institutions will not falter next time? A key lesson of this investigation is this.

Cheney made a point when she asked why Americans should assume that institutions will work again if the wrong individuals are in power next time. The story of January 6 turned out to be a string of officials, many of whom were Republicans, who refused to go along with the scheme. She reminded the nation that our institutions only hold when men and women of good faith make sure they are strong regardless of the political consequences.

Our country is a country of laws where every person, including the President, must follow the law and respect the judgment of our courts. President Trump’s closest advisers held that view both then and now. [Begin videotape]

The courts rejected President Trump’s fraud and other allegations as well, as were his Department of Justice appointees. President Trump was aware of the truth. He heard what all the experts were saying to him. He decided to ignore the courts, ignore the Justice Department, ignore his campaign leadership, ignore senior advisers, and try to overturn the election after he knew he had lost.

Let’s read a statement from a judge. “High ranking members of Congress and state officials, who know perfectly well the claim of fraud was and is untrue and that the election was legitimate, are so afraid of losing their power, they won’t say so. It must be clear that this isn’t patriotism and that America shouldn’t stand for it for one man who knows better than most how to lose an election. Mr. Chairman, the violence and lawlessness of January 6th was unjustifiable, but our nation cannot only punish the foot soldiers who stormed our Capitol.

So, as we watch the evidence today, please consider where our nation is in its history. We might survive for another 246 years. People have not been free most of the time. America is not an exception and only because we bind ourselves to the principles of our constitution.

Some of the principles are more important than any single American who has ever lived. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.

After the Election: President Donald Trump’s Campaign Manager, Kevin McCarthy, and the House Republican Leader, Kevin Stepien, and David Kushner, when the votes were still being counted

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We begin this meeting after the election, on November 3rd, 2020. As the chairman noted, we’ve previously presented testimony about how the election results were expected to come in that night. In certain states, ballots cast by mail before Election Day would be counted only after the polls closed that evening.

That meant that election results would not be known for some time. Although President Trump’s campaign manager, Bill Stepien, House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy, and Jared Kushner had advised Donald Trump to encourage mail in voting by Republicans, President Trump did not do so. [Begin videotape]

I just remember generally, you know, you had people arguing that we had a — a very, very robust get out the vote effort and that, you know, mail in ballots could be a good thing for us if we looked at it correctly.

I invited Kevin McCarthy to join the meeting, he being of like mind on — on the issue with me, in which we made our case for — for why we believed mail in balloting, mail in voting not to be a bad thing for his campaign, but, you know, the President’s mind was made up. The end videotape.

So it was expected before the election that the initial counts in some states, in other words, those votes cast on Election Day, would be more heavily Republican and this would create the false perception of a lead for President Trump, a so-called red mirage. But as the results of the absentee ballots that were later counted, there could be trends towards Vice President Biden as those mail in ballots were counted.

Donald Trump was told by his advisers to hold off on declaring victory so as to allow the remaining ballots to be counted. Bill Stepien is the campaign manager. [Begin videotape]

It was far too early to be making any calls like that. Ballots — ballots were still being counted. Ballots were still going to be counted for days. And it was far too early to be making any proclamation like that. I believe it was my recommendation to say that votes were still being counted. It’s too soon to say if it’s a good race or not.

There is a fraud going on with the American public. This is an embarrassment to our country. We were close to victory in this election. Frankly, we did win this election. Use theapplause. We want people to stop voting. The end videotape.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/10/13/1125331584/jan-6-committee-hearing-transcript

Videotape: What is a candidate at the center of the January 6 election storm, just after 5 pm, when President Trump notified the Secret Service?

The primary target of President Trump’s pressure campaign was Vice president Pence, who may have been the target of that campaign as well. A day before the joint session, the Secret Service was aware of increased chatter regarding whether Vice President Pence would reverse the results of the election, if requested by President Trump. On the morning of the 6th, agents received alerts of online threats that Vice — Vice President Pence would be “a dead man walking if he doesn’t do the right thing.” Another agent reported, “I saw several other alerts saying they will storm the Capitol if he doesn’t do the right thing.” The anger reflected in these postings was obvious, the man at the center of the storm on January 6th, President Trump.

There was a possibility of a declaration of victory in the White House prior to the election results being known, and I was told that byMarc, who had indicated to me. And that he was trying to figure out a way of avoiding the Vice President sort of being thrust into a position of needing to opine on that when he might not have sufficient information to do so. [End of video]

The Select Committee got this pre-prepared statement from the National Archives. The draft statement that was sent on October 31st declares, “We had an election today and I won.” There is a plan that only the votes counted by the election day deadline and no Election Day deadline will matter, according to the Fitton memo.

Everyone knew that the counting of votes on election night was going to be halted, and that they were going to keep counting even after Election Day. On Election Day, just after 5 pm, Mr. Fitton indicated he’d spoken with the President about the statement.

And just a few days before the election, Steve Bannon, a former Trump chief White House strategist and outside adviser to President Trump, spoke to a group of his associates from China and said this. You can begin the videotape.

What is Trump going to do, just declare victory? He’s gonna declare victory, but that doesn’t mean he’s the winner, he’s just gonna say he’s a winner. The Democrats vote early so that they make a difference. Theirs vote in mail, and so they’re going to have a natural disadvantage and Trump’s going to take advantage of it. That is our strategy.

I’m directing the Attorney General to shut down all ballot places in all 50 states. He’s not going out easy. If Biden is winning, Trump is going to do some crazy shit. [End videotape]

As you know, Mr. Bannon refused to testify in our investigation. He’s been convicted of criminal contempt of Congress and he’s awaiting sentencing. The evidence shows that Mr. Bannon knew about Mr. Trump’s plan to make a false announcement on election night. Here’s what Bannon said on January 5th. Begin videotape.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/10/13/1125331584/jan-6-committee-hearing-transcript

When Donald Trump tries to win the election: Roger Stone, the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers (Kelly Meggs)

Tomorrow is going to be a big day. It’s all converging and now we’re on, as they say, the point of attack, right, the point of attack tomorrow. I’ll tell you this, it’s not going to happen like you think it’s going to happen. Ok. It’s going to be very different. I can’t tell you anything other than strap in. You made this happen and now the game is tomorrow.

President Trump had tried to do it earlier in the month. According to testimony from witnesses, President Donald Trump asked his top aide to speak with Roger Stone and General Michael Flynn at the Willard Hotel on January 5th and 6th.

I do believe that it will still be up in the air. When that happens, the key thing to do is to claim victory. It is less than 10% of the law.

Although we don’t have all of Roger Stone’s communications records, even his social media posts say he spoke with Donald Trump on December 27th as preparations for January 6th were underway. In this post, you can see how Roger Stone talked about his conversations with President Trump.

I told the President how he can use subpoena power to ensure those attempting to steal the 2020 election through voter fraud are charged and convicted, as well as ensuring Donald Trump continues as the President,” he wrote. As we know by now, the idea for a special counsel was not just an idle suggestion.

In addition to his connection to President Trump, Roger Stone maintained extensive direct connections to two groups responsible for violently attacking the Capitol, the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys. Individuals from both of these organizations have been charged with the crime of seditious conspiracy. So what is a seditious conspiracy?

Earlier this year, he pled guilty to seditious conspiracy and — and obstruction of Congress. Another example is the married couple,Kelly and Connie Meggs. The leader of the Oath Keepers in Florida was Kelly Meggs. Both he and his wife provided security for Roger Stone, and both are charged with leading a military style stack attack of Oath Keepers attacking the Capitol on January 6th. Roger Stone is a close friend of the national chairman of the Proud Boys.

Roger Stone’s connection with Enrique Tarrio and the Proud Boys is well documented by video evidence, with phone records the Select Committee has obtained. The Proud Boys, along with Tarrio, have been charged with multiple crimes for their involvement in the January 6th attack. During the attack, Tarrio sent a message to other Proud Boys claiming, we did that.

Intentionality: The committee demonstrated that January 6 was not some sort of one-off, unintended day of chaos where events unexpectedly spun out of control. It was premeditated.

The — I know that the President when the networks called it, of course, he was informed about the — the network decision. That afternoon at some point, myself And a handful of other folks went over and sat down with the President and communicated that the odds of us prevailing in legal challenges were very small.

We’re at the Oval and there is a discussion going on. And the President says, I think — it could have been Pompeo, but he says words to the effect of, yeah, we lost. We should let the issue go to the next guy, that’s what we need to do.

I was able to see how the President was doing after coming into the Oval just to give him the headlines. And he was looking at the TV and he said, can you believe I lost to this effing guy?

I and Mark raised it together on the 18th. And so following that conversation with the motorcade ride driving back to the White House, I said, look, does the President really think he lost? And he said, you know, a lot of times he’ll tell me that he lost, but he wants to keep fighting it. He thinks that there might be enough to overturn the election, but you know, he — he pretty much has acknowledged that he — that he’s lost.

Knowing that he had lost and that he had only weeks left in office, President Trump rushed to complete his unfinished business. President Trump issued an order for large-scale US troop withdrawals. He disregarded concerns about the consequences for fragile governments on the front lines of the fight against ISIS and Al-Qaeda terrorists.

Knowing he was leaving office, he acted immediately and signed this order on November 11th, which would have required the immediate withdrawal of troops from Somalia and Afghanistan, all to be complete before the Biden inauguration on January 20th. The National security adviser to the vice president and the chief of staff for the National Security Council both served under President Trump.

Are you familiar with a memo that the President signed in November 2020 ordering troops to be withdrawn from Afghanistan?

So I think you might have seen some things where there’s a memo or something from Johnny McEntee to Douglas Macgregor. It says, here’s your task, to get US forces out of out of Somalia, get US forces out of Afghanistan. Is it fair to say that you discussed the decision to withdraw from Afghanistan when you first met Colonel Douglas Macgregor?

He responded to you on that same day and said that the leadership of the DOD wouldn’t do any of those steps without an order.

I explained to McEntee in language he understood, that he should move in the order I said it was in. I said, If you want this to happen or the President wants this to happen, he’s got to write an order.

I sketched some key statements for him on a piece of paper. You know, the President directs. What is the right word for this?

McEntey brought it in to the President. The President shakes his hand and it’s over. Kash Patel delivers it to me.

The PPO’s Decision to Give Up on Afghanistan: An Observational Framework for the Study of Predictive Decisions in High-Power Executive Searches

I told the PPO that if I ever saw something like that, I would do something physical. Because I thought what that was then was a tremendous disservice to the nation. That was a very contentious issue. Some people didn’t like the idea of getting out of Afghanistan.

I take their concerns seriously. An immediate departure that that memo said would have been a catastrophic. It’s the same as what Biden went through. It wouldn’t be a good thing. [End videotape]

Keep in mind the order was for an immediate withdrawal. It would have been terrible. And yet, President Trump signed the order. These are actions taken by a President who knows his term is coming to an end. At the same time that President Trump was acknowledging privately that he had lost the election, he was hearing that there was no evidence of fraud or irregularities sufficient to change the outcome.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/10/13/1125331584/jan-6-committee-hearing-transcript

Do we need to find out the outcome of the election? A brief history of the Trump campaign and a bitter case in the US Supreme Court

I remember Mr.Meadows asking me if I was finding anything on the call. I mentioned to him that we weren’t finding anything that could change the results in any of the states.

It would be our job to track it down and come up dry because the allegation didn’t prove to be true. We would have to relay the news. That tip, that someone told you about those votes or the fraud, nothing came of it. That will be our job as — as, you know, the truth-telling squad and, you know, not a fun job to be — you know, it’s — it’s an easier job to be telling the President about, you know, wild allegations.

What was generally discussed was whether the fraud, maladministration or abuse if aggregated and read most favorable to the campaign would be outcome determinative. And I think everyone’s assessment in the room, at least amongst the staff, Marc Short, myself, and Greg Jacob, was that it was not sufficient to be outcome determinant. End videotape.

The claims were not supported by any sufficient evidence of fraud or irregularities. In fact, they were baseless as judges repeatedly recognized. There were 62 cases in which President Trump could not establish any claims of election fraud that would overturn the results of the election. We shared the words used by judges around the country to reject the Trump campaign’s claims.

It criticizes the lack of evidence to support election fraud claims in those lawsuits. The charges that the appeals court in Pennsylvania wrote about required specific allegations and proof. We have neither here. A federal judge in Wisconsin wrote, quote, that the court has allowed the former president to argue his case and has lost on the merits.

A judge in Michigan called the claims, “nothing but speculation and supposition.” They theorize that the votes for President Trump were either destroyed, discarded or switched to votes for Vice President Biden. A federal judge in Michigan sanctioned nine attorneys, including Sidney Powell, for making frivolous allegations in an election fraud case, describing the case as a historic and profound abuse of the judicial process.

The Trump allies lost a lawsuit in the US Supreme Court that was seen as their final chance to win in the courts. A Secret Service message shows how angry the president was regarding the outcome. Quote, just FYI, POTUS is pissed. Breaking news, Supreme Court denied his lawsuit.

We know that President Trump’s White House advisers reacted negatively. Cassidy Hutchinson spoke with the Chief of Staff immediately after the call. Begin the videotape.

This is the day that the Supreme Court had rejected that case. We went to a Christmas reception at the White House. The President walked out of the Oval Office towards the Rose Garden colonnade while we were walking back from the Christmas reception.

The president was angry with the Supreme Court decision. I had stepped back when I was next to Mr. Meadows. So I was probably two or three feet catty-cornered, diagonal from him. The President just rages about the decision and how wrong it is, and why we weren’t able to make more calls.

December 14th is when the states certify their votes and send them to Congress. And in my view, that was the end of the matter. I didn’t see — you know, I — I thought that this would lead inexorably to a new administration.

I said that my personal opinion was that the Electoral College had met, which meant that there was no need for him to pursue litigation since the system ofelecting the president and vice president was over.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/10/13/1125331584/jan-6-committee-hearing-transcript

The Campaign to Overturn the 2020 Presidential Election: A Brief Interview with the Secretary of Labor and the State of the Investigating (The case of the Democratic National Committee)

The Secretary of Labor met with the president in mid-December to explain the situation. Start the videotape.

So, I had put a call in to the president. I might have called on that day. I thought it was time for him to acknowledge that President Biden had been elected in the election, and I told him that on the 14th. I told him that the legal process is over, and that the result needs to be expected when the electors have voted.

I told him that I did believe, yes, that once the — those legal processes were run, if fraud had not been established that had affected the outcome of the election, then unfortunately I believed that what had to be done was concede the outcome. End the videotape.

Orchestration: The campaign to overturn the 2020 election was not a haphazard effort where Trump deployed a chaotic plan, desperate to keep power. The former president and key advisers of the administration deliberately pushed to overcome the electoral defeat. Roger Stone said that possession is nine tenths of the law. F–k you.”

I raised the voting machines that are from the Dominion, which I found to be among the most disturbing, because I saw absolutely no basis for the allegations. I told them that it was crazy stuff and they were doing a grave disservice to the country by wasting their time on it.

The company we have is very suspect. There is a new name for it. With the turn of a dial or the change of a chip, you could press a button for Trump and the vote goes to Biden. What kind of a system is this?

Dominant Voting Systems in Antrim County, Michigan, and New Jersey, Is There a Big Vote Dump?

We definitely talked about Antrim County again. That was sort of done at that point because the hand recount had been done and all that. This is an example of what people are telling you and what is not supported by the evidence, and that’s why we cited it back.

In addition, there is the highly troubling matter of Dominion voting systems. In one Michigan county, 6,000 votes were changed from Trump to Biden, and same systems are used in the majority of states.

I went into this and would, you know, tell him how crazy some of these allegations were and how ridiculous some of them were. And I’m talking about some of the ones like, you know, more votes — more absentee votes were cast in Pennsylvania than there were absentee ballots request — you know, stuff like that was just easy to blow up. There was never — there was never an indication of interest in what the actual facts were.

There were more votes than there were voters. Think of that. You had more votes than you had voters. It’s easy to figure, and it’s by the thousands.

He called it a big vote dump in Detroit. And that — you know, he said people saw boxes coming in to the counting station at all hours of the morning. In Detroit there are 630 places to vote. And unlike elsewhere in the state, they centralized the counting process so they’re not counted in each precinct.

With regard to Georgia, we looked at the tape. We interviewed the witnesses. There is no suitcase. The president kept talking about the suitcase that supposedly had fraudulent ballots and the fact that the suitcase was rolled out from under the table. And I said, no, sir, there is no suitcase. You can watch that video over and over again.

There isn’t a suitcase. There is a wheeled bin where they carry the ballots, and that’s just how they move ballots around that facility. There’s no reason to suspect that.

Election officials pulled boxes, Democrats, and suitcases of ballots out from under a table. You all saw it on television, totally fraudulent. End the video.

This happened over and over again, and our committee’s report will document it, purposeful lies made in public directly at odds with what Donald Trump knew from unassailable sources, the Justice Department’s own investigations and his own campaign. Donald Trump maliciously repeated this nonsense to a wide audience over and over again.

His intent was to deceive. President Trump tried to change the election outcome in the states he lost. He personally reached out to numerous state officials and pressured them to take unlawful steps to alter the election results in those states. The actions the president took made it very clear that his intentions were to prevent the orderly transfer of power.

The secretary told the president he had lost the election in Georgia, but he didn’t accept that. Instead, he suggested that Secretary Raffensperger himself might be prosecuted. [Begin videotape]

So, look, now all I want to do is this. We won the state, so I’m trying to find 11,780 more votes. We only need 11,000 votes. We have far more than that as it stands now. We will have more and more. So, what are we going to do here, folks? If I only need 11,000 votes.

I just want to find 11,780 votes. The president knew from the Justice Department there was no genuine basis for this request, so it’s an extraordinary demand. Nobody could think that it would be legal for the secretary of state to find the votes that the president needed to win.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/10/13/1125331584/jan-6-committee-hearing-transcript

What the fake electors’ plan told Vice President Pence about the nomination of Jeffrey Clark to the presidency in order to prevent a presidential impeachment

It’s the thing. That is a criminal offense. And — and, you know, you can’t let that happen. That is a major risk for you and your lawyer. That’s a big risk. [End videotape]

I remember looking at Mark. I told Mark that we can’t possibly pull this off. Like, that call was crazy. And he looks at me and just started shaking his head. He was like, “You know, he knows it’s over.” We’re going to keep trying even though he knows he lost. There are some good options.

President Trump tried to install Jeff Clark as acting attorney general because he would do what the others in the department would not do. We know that the Justice Department’s powers were used to corruptly bribe the states to flip their electoral votes in order for Trump to win the election.

When Richard Donoghue and Jeff Rosen were appointed by the president, they learned of Mr. Clark’s proposal and forcefully rejected it. Begin the tape.

And I recall toward the end saying what you’re proposing is nothing less than the United States Justice Department meddling in the outcome of a presidential election. This was not based on fact. This was actually contrary to the facts as developed by department investigations over the last several weeks and months.

The President ultimately relented only because the entire leadership of the Department of Justice as well as his White House counsel threatened to resign. Mr. Chairman, I yield back.

When I received the call — again, I don’t remember the exact date — it was — it was from the White House switchboard and it was President Trump who had contacted me.

He gave Mr. Eastman the call and then talked about how important the RNC was to the campaign in case the legal challenges changed the outcome of the states. End videotape

The fake electors’ plan was connected to the campaign to force the vice president to reject or refuse to count the electoral votes of Biden, so that Donald Trump would win reelection rather than being impeached. Here is what Vice President Pence has said about this scheme.

President Trump claims that he had the right to overturn the election. I had no right to overturn the election. The presidency belongs to the American people and the American people alone. There is no doubt that the idea of a single person choosing the American President is un-American.

And Dr. Eastman confirmed this in writing. Recall this email written on January 6 in which Vice President Pence’s counsel asked Dr. Eastman; did you advise the President that in your professional judgment, the Vice President does not have power to decide things unilaterally? Dr. Eastman replied, he’s been so advised.

Of course, President Trump’s own White House counsel, Pat Cipollone, also recognized that this plan was unlawful. Mr. Cipollone gave testimony. [Begin videotape]

Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/10/13/1125331584/jan-6-committee-hearing-transcript

The White House had a Plan to Attack the Capitol, as Senator Jonathan Trump Receives on January 6th: I. Calling the Secret Service

And the word that she relayed to you that the President called the Vice President, I apologize for being impolite, but do you remember what she said her father called him?

2:24 p.m. Knowing the riot that was about to hit on his own Vice President, President Trump put out a memo attacking him for not rejecting electoral college votes for Joe Biden and handing the presidency to him. The impact of thatTweet was predictable and foreseeable.

In the end, all these people, Department of Justice officials, state elections’ officials, his own Vice President, stood strong in the face of President Trump’s immense pressure. We now know that President Trump had summoned his supporters to Washington on January 6 to take back their country.

The members of the crowd were screened by the Secret Service as they arrived for the rally on the 6th. And they noticed something significant about the crowd. Tens of thousands of people were outside the rally site, but did not want to go through the magnetometers, the metal detectors that were used to screen for dangerous weapons.

The select committee has received more cooperation from the Secret Service. Nevertheless, Secret Service text messages from this period were erased in the days and months following the attack on the Capitol, even though documents and materials related to January 6th had already been requested by the Department of Justice and Congress.

An intelligence summary that was sent to the President’s senior advisers from the Department of Justice and FBI suggested that people traveling to Washington were planning to attack the Capitol. This summary noted online calls to occupy federal buildings, rhetoric about invading the Capitol building, and plans to arm themselves and to engage in political violence at the event.

During these calls, I recall that he was pretty much clairvoyant. Norquist claims that the greatest threat is a direct assault on the Capitol. I’ll never forget it. The end of the videotape.

The email was alert that the Secret Service received on December 24th with the heading, “Armed and Ready, Mr. President.” Multiple users online ordered others to march into the chambers on January 6th as a warning to members of Congress that they were being targeted.

The Secret Service field office relayed to them a tip they had received from the FBI. The Proud Boys plan to march armed into DC, according to a source. They think that they will have a large enough group to march into DC armed, the source reported, and will outnumber the police so they can’t be stopped.

Later on the evening of January 5th, the Secret Service learned during an FBI briefing that right-wing groups were establishing armed QRFs or quick reaction forces readying to deploy for January 6th. Groups like the Oath Keepers were standing by at the ready should POTUS request assistance by invoking the Insurrection Act, agents were informed.

One report from the rally site at 7:58 a.m. said, some members of the crowd are wearing ballistic helmets, body armor, carrying radio equipment and military grade backpacks. Another from 9:30 a.m. said that there were possibly OC spray, meaning pepper spray, and/or plastic riot shields. At 11:23 a.m., agents also reported possible armed individuals, one with a glock, one with a rifle.

Over the next hour, agents reported possible man with a gun reported, confirmed pistol on hip located in a tree; and one detained at 14th and I Street northwest; individual had an assault rifle on his person.

Minutes before President Trump began his speech, members of the Federal Protective Service, an agency tasked with protecting federal buildings, were alerted about an arrest of a protester with a gun on his waistband. And during the speech, the weapons related arrests continued. At 12:13 PM, United States Park Police arrested a man with a rifle in front of the World War II Memorial. The agents wondered if the situation would get worse after the number of weapons had been seized.

On one of these sites — as you’ve heard, one of those was called TheDonald.win. The Select Committee has obtained a text message that Jason Miller, a senior communications adviser, sent to Mark Meadows less than a week before January 6th. He wrote that the base was fired up. He sent a link to this page on TheDonald.win.

Comments about the congressional session on January 6th were posted on the linked web page. Take a look at some of those comments. “Gallows don’t require electricity.” There will be hell to pay if filthy commie maggots try to push their fraud through. “Our lawmakers in Congress can leave one of two ways; one, in a body bag, two, after rightfully certifying Trump the winner.” Mr. Miller claimed that he didn’t know about the hundreds of comments that were found in the link that he sent.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/10/13/1125331584/jan-6-committee-hearing-transcript

Sensitivity to a Secret Service Anarchy, or Why the POTUS Message in December 2017 was Unstable and Flared on the Capitol

If I had seen that, I would probably have flipped it to the person at the White House, or if I had seen something similar, I would have called the Secret Service. End videotape.

The same day Jason Miller sent his text message, agents received reports about a spike in activity on another platform called Parler. The December 30th was this year. In this email, an agent received a report noting a lot of violent rhetoric on Parler directed at government people and entities, including Secret Service protectees.

An agent reported that Trump’s anti-Pence message caused his followers to leave him alone. POTUS said “he lacked courage; over 24,000 likes in under 2 minutes.” Employees at Twitter were nervously monitoring the situation. They were aware of the riots on the Capitol at the same time as they were writing about it.

They were excited and fired up. They were angry. They feel like the election’s been stolen, that the election was rigged, that — he went on and on about that for a little bit. End videotape.

Yes, the president knew the crowd was angry because he had stoked that anger. He knew that they believed that the election had been rigged and stolen because he had told them falsely that it had been rigged and stolen. He knew they were dangerous when he got the angry mob to march on the Capitol.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/10/13/1125331584/jan-6-committee-hearing-transcript

The State of the Art, the Secret Service, and the Associated Security Forces. An Opening Statement with an Interrupted Senator, Mr. Aguilar

The gentleman yields back. We’ll take a brief break at this point. Pursuant to the order of the committee of today, the chair declares the committee in recess for a period of approximately 10 minutes. In the middle of recess. The chair recognizes the gentleman from California, Mr. Aguilar, for an opening statement.

He was annoyed that people with weapons were not allowed into the mags, which is what the Secret Service deemed as weapons. I overheard the president say something to the effect of, you know, I don’t care that they have weapons.

They’re not here to hurt me. Take the f’ing mags away. Allow my people in. They can march to the Capitol from here. People should be allowed in. Take that f’ing mags away. [End videotape]

And I’d love to have, if those tens of thousands of people would be allowed, the military, the Secret Service — and we want to thank you, and the police, law enforcement, great. You’re doing a good job. [Applause] But I’d love it if they could be allowed to come up here with us. Is that possible? Can you just let them come up, please?

The Capitol Mob: Why the President Walks to the Capitol, or Why the Congressional Security Officials – The Security professionals in the White House Complex – are in shock?

As that professional told us, they remember hearing in the days after January 6th how angry the president was when he was in the limo that afternoon. That professional also testified that they were specifically informed of the –president’s irate behavior in the SUV by Mr. Ornato in Mr. Ornato’s office. The office was occupied by Mr. Ornato and Mr. Engel.

And I will also note this. The testimony regarding potential obstruction on this issue, as well as testimony about advice not to tell the committee about this topic, are being reviewed. We will address this in our report.

As we’ve mentioned previously, the security professionals in the White House complex and who report to the national security officials, responded when they heard that Mr. Trump was going to lead a mob to the Capitol. Begin the videotape

We all were in a state of shock. Why? Because we just, one, I think that the actualphysical feasibility of doing it, and then also we all knew what that meant, that this was going to move to something else if he physically walked to the Capitol.

I don’t know if you want to use the word coup or insurrection. We all knew that this would move from a normal democratic, you know, public event into something else. Why were we alarmed?

Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/10/13/1125331584/jan-6-committee-hearing-transcript

Correspondence between the White House Press Secretary and the Secretary of the Secret Service about a White House President’s Decay on January 6

We have testimony from several members of the president’s White House staff establishing that President Trump refused entreaties from his closest advisers and family members to tell his supporters to stand down and leave the Capitol. Pat Cipollone worked in the White House for President Trump.

The White House press secretary described an exchange with the president as soon as he arrived back at the White House. Start the videotape.

I remember him saying that he’d ride the beast if necessary, and then he said that he would be part of the march if he needed to. End the video.

Take a look at the Secret Service email from 1:19 PM on January 6th, the minute that President Trump got out of the presidential vehicle back at the White House. As soon as the president left his motorcade, leadership from the Secret Service contacted Bobby Engel, the leader of the presidential detail, and warned him that they were concerned about an off the record movement to the Capitol.

I don’t want to discuss it with the president, but I will say that people need to be told immediately that they need to leave the Capitol.

Approximately when? People were getting into the Capitol or approaching the Capitol in a violent way immediately after I learned of it.

I can’t think of anyone who didn’t want the people to leave the Capitol once the violence started. I’m referring to —

I’m sorry. I am. I apologize. I thought you said who on — who else on the staff. I can’t reveal the communications, but I think that’s true. [End videotape]

The testimony of Mr. Cipollone and others is backed by other White House staff members. Here’s Ms Hutchinson giving a description of what she heard. Continue with videotape.

You heard him say something to the effect of. He doesn’t want to do anything more. He does not think they are doing anything wrong. End video.

Then on January 6, Trump purposely ignored many warnings of violence. He wanted his troops to go to Capitol Hill. As the attacks against Congress unfolded and his allies urged him to call off the troops, Maryland Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin reminded viewers that he sat and watched as the attacks unfolded. It wasn’t that Trump didn’t act on January 6; it was that he didn’t want to act. Can you believe it? Pelosi was heard talking to Thompson.

This is a very violent chaos. Kevin McCarthy implored Donald Trump to tell his supporters in the mob to leave the Capitol. And when that didn’t work, McCarthy called Trump’s adult children to try to get them to intercede with Trump to call off the insurrectionary violence. We showed you the description of what McCarthy told the congresswoman about his conversation with Trump.

The select committee stated that they wanted to discover the intent behind Trump’s actions in the SUV. Many witnesses, including Trump’s press secretary Kayleigh McEnany and the Secret Service press secretary, have said Trump wanted to go to the Capitol and was angry when told he could not.

And to your knowledge, was the president in that private dining room the whole time that the attack on the Capitol was going on, or did he ever go to — again, only to your knowledge, to the Oval Office, to the White House Situation Room, anywhere else?

Yeah. What did the president say when they met with you in the dining room? What do you recall? I think they were — everyone was watching the TV. Do you know whether he was watching TV in the dining room when you talked to him on January 6th?

When you were in the dining room in these discussions, was that it — was the violence at the Capitol visible on the screen on the — in — on the television?

You’ll see how everyone involved was working actively to stop the violence, to get federal law enforcement deployed to the scene, to put down the violence and secure the Capitol complex. Not just Democrats like Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, but Republicans like Vice President Pence, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Majority Whip John Thune, and countless other appointees across the administration.

We’re starting to get surrounded. The scaffolding is being taken on the north front. We aren’t going to be able to hold if we don’t get more weapons. The door has been breached and people are gaining access into the Capitol.

It is necessary that we maintain the sense that people have of the government’s ability to work and that they will be able to vote for the president of the United States. Did we go back into session?

Everybody on the floor has been wearing tear gas masks since we went back into session. I’m trying to find out more.

I can’t. We need a area for the House members. They are all walking through the tunnel. Bring her out here. Hey, boys, we’re coming in if you don’t bring her out.

I’m going to summon the secretary of DOD. Senators are still in their hideaways. Huge personnel are needed right now. Can you get the Maryland National Guard to come too?

I have something to say. I am going to speak to the mayor of Washington DC, and see if she has outreach to other police departments.

Hi, Governor. This is Nancy. Governor, I don’t know if you have been approached about the Virginia National Guard. Mr. Hoyer was connect — speaking to Governor Hogan, but I still think you probably need the Ok of the federal government in order to come in to another jurisdiction. Thank you.

They said someone was shot. It’s just — it’s just horrendous. The instigation of the president of the United States. Ok, thank you, Governor. I’m very appreciative of what you are doing. And if you don’t mind, I’d like to stay in touch. Thank you. Thank you.

200 state police were sent and a unit of the National Guard was also sent, according to the governor I talked to. They are breaking windows and going in, and ransacking our offices. That’s nothing. The concern we have about personal harm.

Personal safety is a part of everything. On any given day, they’re breaking the law in a lot of different ways, and it’s all because of the president. And now if he could — could — at least somebody.

The president should tell the people to leave the Capitol since they are in your law enforcement responsibility.

The Pentagon, the White House and the State Department: I’m standing next to the Chief of Police of the US Capitol Police. It’s gonna take days to get back

I don’t want the people in charge of executing the operation to hear about it, so I’m not talking about that. Because they are meeting on the ground and they’re the experts [Inaudible]

Well, just pretend — just pretend for a moment it was the Pentagon or the White House or some other entity that was under siege. Let me say you can logistically get people there as you make the plan. We’re trying to figure out how we can get this job done today. We talked to him about it. He was with us earlier, and he said that they wanted to expedite this. We could vote if they only bothered Arizona, then move forward with the rest of the state.

It would be great to do it at the Capitol. What we are being told very directly is it’s going to take days for the Capitol to be Ok again. We’ve gotten a very bad report about the condition of the House floor, defecation and all that kind of thing as well. I don’t think that that’s hard to clean up, but I do think it is more from a security standpoint of making sure that everybody is out of the building and how long will that take.

I said that it would take some time to clean up the poo poo that they’re making all over the Capitol and that it may take days to get back.

Nancy, so I’m at the Capitol building. I’m standing next to the Chief of Police of the US Capitol Police. When you hear about it through official channels, Paul Irving, your Sergeant-at-Arms, will tell you that they believe the House and the Senate will be able to return to session in about an hour.

When they saw little sign of help on the way, they all exploded. Schumer demanded that the Attorney General tell the President to get them out of the Capitol. The legislative leaders rushed to restore peace after the White House was overrun by rioters, and Trump failed to take action.

It was clear that only President Trump could end this. He was the only one who could. People publicly begged him to do so. Allies called the administration. The President did not act quickly. He did not do his job. He didn’t take steps so federal law could be faithfully executed and order restored.

Another witness, Mick Mulvaney, President Trump’s former chief of staff, has also come forward and corroborated her shocking account. [Begin videotape]

You know, I asked Kevin McCarthy who’s the Republican leader about this and — and he said he called –he finally got through to Donald Trump He said that you need to be on TV. You need to get on the social media platform. You’ve got to get rid of those people. You know what the President told him? This is as it’s happening.

He said that these aren’t his people. These are all about anti-fascists. Kevin told him that they’re his people. They snuck through my office windows and my staff were running for cover. I mean, they’re running for their lives. You need to get rid of them. The President’s response to Kevin was very chilling.

He said, well, Kevin, I guess they’re just more upset about the election, you know, theft than you are. You’ve already heard that Kevin McCarthy and the President had a swearing conversation. That’s when the swearing commenced, because the President was basically saying, no, I’m — I’m okay with this.

I had — I had a conversation at some point in the day or week after the — the riot with Kevin McCarthy. Yeah. It was very similar to what Jaime had, the conversation she had retold about how he called and asked the President to get them to stop. And the President told him something along the lines of, Kevin, maybe these people are just more angry about this than you are, maybe more upset.

Anika and the perpetrators of the September 11 attack on the Vice President, Mike Pence and the entire Senate committee that voted against him

But let me be very clear to all of you and I’ve been very clear to the President; he bears responsibilities for his words and actions, no ifs, ands or buts. I wanted to know if he held responsibility for what happened. Does he feel bad about what happened? He admitted that he has some responsibility for what happened and needs to acknowledge that.

It further inflamed the mob which was chanting, hang Mike Pence, and provoked them to even greater violence. This deliberate decision to enrage the mob against Vice President Pence is not justified because President Trump could have thought about the election. The vice president’s Secret Service detail was the most concerned about his physical safety at the time.

The company found a surge of violent hashtag’s as the afternoon progressed, including lines of lethal insult like executing Mike Pence. Anika has agreed to tell her story because she wishes to speak out about the magnitude of the threats facing our people.

Yes, and after in response to this, too. Because I think as many as many of Donald Trump’s tweets did, it again fanned the flames. And it was individuals who were already constructing gallows, who were already willing, able and wanting to execute someone and looking for someone to be killed. Now, the individual was called upon then to begin this coup is now pointing the finger at another individual while they’re ready to do this.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/10/13/1125331584/jan-6-committee-hearing-transcript

What happened to Donald Trump on the 6th day of the September 11 election? — Mike Pence screwed us up, and why he didn’t

Mike Pence will not support Donald Trump. Mike Pence was a traitor. Mike Pence has screwed us, in case you haven’t heard yet. What happened? What happened? Mike Pence has messed us up, that is what I hear. That’s the word I keep hearing reports that Mike Pence has screwed us. End the videotape.

Thousands of people overran the line that the civil disturbed unit was holding on the west side of the Capitol within a ten minute period after President Trump’s announcement. It was the first time that a security line like that had ever been broken in the history of the Metropolitan Police Department.

President Trump’s conduct that day was so shameful and so outrageous that it prompted numerous members of the White House staff and other Trump appointees to resign. In prior hearings, you’ve heard Deputy National Security Adviser Matt Pottinger and Deputy White House Press Secretary Sarah Matthews explain why they felt compelled to resign on that day.

Since then, we’ve spoken to more high ranking officials like President Trump’s envoy to Northern Ireland and former Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, and Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, who resigned after the 6th in protest of Trump’s misconduct and to dissociate themselves from his role in the violence.

I was stunned by violence, and I was stunned by the President’s apparent indifference to the violence. The time is ripe for the president to be in charge. I thought he failed at doing it. I thought he failed at a critical time to be the sort of leader that the nation needed.

I think the events at the Capitol, however they occurred, were shocking. I mentioned in my statement that it was something that I couldn’t put aside. And at a particular point, the events were such that it was impossible for me to continue given my personal values and my philosophy. I came as an immigrant to this country.

I believe in this country. A peaceful transfer of power is something that I believe in. I believe in democracy. And so I was a — it was a decision that I made on my own. [End videotape]

We are delivering a message. Donald Trump has asked everybody to go home. That’s our order. He says go back to your home. The end of the videotape.

President Trump continued his statement that he would not condemn the mass violence in any way but rather excuse and praise it. Significantly, he made it clear that he considered the violence perfectly foreseeable and predictable. If you are interested, check it out. These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously, viciously, stripped away from great patriots who have been badly unfairly treated for so long.

He said the things that happened were giving the whole game away. Trump was telling us that the Vice President, the Congress, and all the injured and wounded cops, some of whom are with us today, got what was coming to us. According to Trump. January 6 should not be a day that lives in shame in infamy in our history, but rather in glory.

If the president had wanted to make a statement and address the American people, he could have been on camera almost instantly. The White House press corps has their offices behind the briefing room. If he wanted to make an address from the Oval office, we could have assembled the White House press corps in a matter of minutes.

Jan 6th Committee on Investigating January 6th Reaction Against Insurrection and Repression: Dr. Lee Hodges, Secretary of the Joint Committee on Civil Rights and the First Amendment

Mr. Chairman, in numerous places, our Constitution strongly opposes insurrection and rebellion. Article I gives Congress the power to call forth the militia to suppress insurrections. Section 3 of the 14th amendment says that anyone who has committed an offense such as insurrection or rebellion is not allowed to be a federal or state official.

It was President Lincoln, at the start of the Civil War in 1861, who best explained why democracy rejects insurrection. Insurrection, he said, is a war upon the first principle of popular government, the rights of the people. American democracy belongs to all the American people, not to a single man. Thank you, Chairman.

The gentleman makes a gesture. During this committee’s first hearing in July of last year, our witnesses were four police officers who helped repel the riots of January 6th. We asked them what they hoped to see the committee accomplish over the course of our investigation. The rioters were made to believe that the election process was rigged.

Officer Fanone asked us to look at actions that led to the events. Officer Hodges was concerned about whether anyone in power had a role. OfficerDunn said to get to the bottom of what happened. We’ve worked for more than a year to get those answers. We’ve conducted more than a thousand interviews and depositions.

He is the one person at the center of the story of what happened on January 6th, so we want to hear from him. In order to ensure nothing like January 6th ever happens again, the committee needs to tell the most complete story possible and give recommendations. To get a full context for the evidence we’ve obtained, we have to be fair and thorough.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/10/13/1125331584/jan-6-committee-hearing-transcript

The Committee on Judgment Subpoenas to Presidential Testimony: General Flynn’s December 20, 2020 Walk with Oath Keepers

There’s precedent in American history for Congress to compel the testimony of a precedent — president. There’s also precedent for presidents to provide testimony and documentary evidence to Congressional investigators. We understand that the subpoena to a former president is very serious and extraordinary.

The subject matter at issue is so important to the American people and the stakes are so high, that we want this step in full view of the American people. I know the Vice Chair, Ms. Cheney of Wyoming, will offer a motion.

Thank you very much Mr. Chairman. The committee now has sufficient information to answer many of the important questions that congress posed to it. We have sufficient information to consider criminal referrals for multiple individuals and to recommend a range of legislative proposals to guard against another January 6th, but a key task remains.

We must seek the testimony under oath of January 6th’s central player. More than 30 witnesses in our investigation have invoked their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, and several of them did so in response to questions about their dealings with Donald Trump directly. There are a few examples.

General Flynn testified before our committee on December 12, 2020, when he was walking with Oath Keepers. Begin the videotape.

Subcommission XXVI: The Commission on the False Electors Plan, and Special Investigations into the Correspondence between Donald and K. Chesebro

The committee identified the original architect of the fake electors plan as Kenneth Chiebro, a pro-Trump attorney. The report claims Kenneth Chesebro, a legal adviser to the Trump campaign, wrote a series of legal memos about the fake elector plan.

So is it your position that you can discuss in the media direct conversations you had with the President of the United States, but you will not discuss those same conversations with this committee.

People who had business with Donald Trump have gone to enormous lengths to avoid testifying. Steve Bannon has been tried and convicted by a jury of his peers for contempt of Congress. He is scheduled to be sentenced for this crime later this month. Criminal proceedings regarding Peter Navarro continue.

And Mark Meadows, Donald Trump’s former chief of staff, has refused to testify based upon executive privilege. The committee’s litigation with him continues. At some point the Department of Justice may uncover the facts that the witnesses are concealing. But our duty today is to our country and our children and our Constitution.

The resolution is already agreed to. Without objection, a motion to reconsider is laid on the table. The Chair requests that those in the hearing room remain seated until the Capitol Police have escorted members from the room. The committee is adjourned without objection.

The Last Four Months of Donald J. Trump’s Campaign for Election Reduction: The Case of the First Day of the “Stop the Steal” March

There is a CNN political analyst named Julian Zelizer, who is a professor of History at the University. He is the author and editor of 24 books, including, “The Presidency of Donald J. Trump: A First Historical Assessment.” Follow him on social media. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion on CNN.

Republican Vice Chair Liz Cheney lost her seat in Wyoming due to her determination to hold Trump to account and she is one of the many committee members who argue that it is doing a service for the future and has left a strong impression they want to kill his political hopes.

In public hearings during the past four months, the bipartisan panel attempted to reveal the full context of what happened that day and who was responsible.

Unlike the Watergate scandal that brought down President Richard Nixon in 1974, one of the most distinctive elements of Trump’s campaign to overturn the 2020 election is that so much of it happened in broad daylight.

The committee provided a lot of important information about how dangerous those months were and how we didn’t realize it at the time.

Steve Bannon told a group of people not to think that the former President was going to claim victory, just that he was. If Biden is the winner, Trump will do some really stupid things, according to Bannon.

When told repeatedly by the top election and legal advisers that the fraud claims were false, Trump and his inner group of people moved forward with reckless abandon.

A number of witnesses, including the former White House strategic communications head, confirmed to the committee that Trump knew he lost. He didn’t care. He wanted to retain power.

On the day of the “Stop the Steal” rally, January 6, 2021, Trump knew that the protesters were armed and dangerous but did nothing to stop them. A Secret Service agent stopped him from going to Capitol Hill, even though he wanted to. Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to the president, said that the man tried to steer the car when he was told he couldn’t go.

Trump and his attorneys, such as Rudy Giuliani, probed to see if various state officials would do their bidding. Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers, a staunch conservative who backed the administration, was unsettled as Giuliani and Trump pressured him during a phone call in late November 2020 to have the state legislature reconvene and invalidate the results in his state. The president’s lawyer John Eastman, who had written the road map for their attempted election steal, pressured Pence’s aides to have him reject the results.

The January 6 Committee: The New York Representative Lee Zeldin and the 2020 Midterm Reionization riot against President Donald J. Trump

January 6 was just one part of a larger story. The January 6 committee is called the January 6 committee but it is actually a committee to investigate the campaign to overturn the 2020 election. This reframing is essential to understanding the months between November 2020 and January 2021.

Throughout these events, we have learned, Trump understood exactly what was happening. He was told many times about how he was making claims that were untrue and warned of the dangers he was taking. Advisers, lawyers and other people who publicly supported him were urging him to stop.

Ongoing Threat: In its pivotal hearing Thursday, the committee wanted to make one thing clear, the danger is not over in 2022. There is still danger to our electoral system and to democratic institutions that will come through in our final hearing. This is not ancient history we’re talking about; this is a continuing threat.” That continued threat exists on many levels. The rhetoric of election denialism has taken hold among many of Republican candidates in the 2022 midterm elections.

Republicans who subscribe to the agenda are running for some key offices, including the governor of Pennsylvania and secretaries of state in key states such as Arizona, all of whom will have an important role in overseeing future elections. The former president is still a contender in the party’s nomination race in ten years.

The committee was able to unpack the dark days that followed the election. They have been exposed in clear detail right in front of our eyes. The biggest mystery left is whether as a nation we will close our eyes and simply move forward without demanding accountability, justice and reform.

On the day the Capitol was trashed, Representative Lee Zeldin of New York walked into the Rotunda held up a shaky camera and went live on Fox News.

Other Republican leaders had already begun distancing the party from President Donald J. Trump, whose monthslong campaign to overturn his election loss helped incite the violence. Mr. Zeldin seemed to be ready to exonerate him.

He said the riot that he condemned wasn’t just about the president of the United States. “This is about people on the left and their double standards.”

Homeland Terrorism After the January 6 Capitol Attack: The Case of the U.S. Capitol as a Trump Threat to Civil War

There was an attack on the United States Capitol in January and a select committee was set up to investigate it. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. CNN has more opinion on it.

This August, after the execution of a federal search warrant at Mar-a-Lago, violent rhetoric from the far-right escalated exponentially, including – shockingly – calls for civil war. Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, warned that if former President Trump is prosecuted, there will be “riots in the streets.” Gosar compared the FBI to brown shirts, an insult used to refer to Nazi storm troopers.

Extreme right figures are preventing efforts to curb violence by attacking the rule of law and giving extremists the go-ahead either tacitly or explicitly.

In January 2021, hours before the tragic January 6 attack on the US Capitol, Trump declared to his followers on the National Mall, “[I]f you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.” GOP Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama told Trump supporters that “[t]oday is the day American patriots start taking down names and kicking ass” while telling the crowd that “our ancestors sacrificed their blood, their sweat, their tears, their fortunes and sometimes their lives,” before asking, “Are you willing to do the same?” No one will forget Republican Josh Hawley’s fist pumping in solidarity as rioters at the Capitol demanded the election be overturned.

insurrectionists testified in court that they were only following presidential orders when they broke into the Capitol and threatened the lives of people working there.

This rise in domestic terrorism comes at a particularly dangerous moment for the country: A recent survey found that half of the country believes “in the next few years, there will be civil war in the United States,” and more than one in 10 Americans expressed their own willingness to commit political violence “to threaten or intimidate” others.

Our public spaces increasingly face violence. The number of schools, grocery stores, and houses of worship has decreased due to mass shootings, hostage taking, and other violent plots. The federal government warned last week that there was a heightened threat to the upcoming election by a rise in violent domestic extremism.

According to experts at the University of Chicago, an estimated 13 million Americans believe force would be justified to restore Trump to the White House, and an estimated 15 million Americans would support using force to prevent the former president from being prosecuted. The rule of law and safety are under attack, as shown by these startling numbers.

To understand how MAGA Republicans exploit their followers and dog-whistle at violence, look no further than their reaction to the FBI’s execution of a lawful search warrant for highly classified documents apparently kept illegally at the former President’s beach club. The Department of Justice followed the law and all normal procedures after attempting to obtain the classified documents on their own. The rule of law is paramount in this country, and Trump and his fellow extremists immediately reacted by attacking it.

What ensued has been all too predictable. Twitter posts about “civil war” rose nearly 3,000% in a matter of hours after the search. There was an increase in the number of threats against federal law enforcement. A week later, an armed man attempted to breach an FBI office in Ohio before engaging in an hours-long standoff with police. The man was shot and killed by police after pointing his gun at them.

A Democratic congressman is reporting that he received a call from someone threatening to kill him. I have also received threats. And just last week, an armed intruder steeped in right-wing conspiracy theories broke into Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s home in what appeared to be an attempt to kidnap and attack our country’s third-highest ranking elected official.

Echoing the January 6 attack on the Capitol, the intruder shouted, “Where is Nancy?” before bludgeoning her 82-year-old husband Paul Pelosi with a hammer, sending him to the hospital with a fractured skull. In the past, the Speaker has been the subject of violent rhetoric from members of Congress.

Editor’s Note: Michael Fanone, a former Washington, DC police officer who was injured during the January 6 riot at the US Capitol, is the author of a memoir, “Hold the Line: The Insurrection and One Cop’s Battle for America’s Soul.” He works for CNN as a law enforcement analyst. The opinions expressed here are his own. Read more opinion at CNN.

The conversation with fellow officers who defended the US Capitol often focuses on why many Americans don’t care about the insurrection. In other words, the majority of Americans don’t care. An attempt to end our democracy? It wasn’t a good thing.

As one officer recently confided, “Mike, maybe if we hadn’t done such a good job against such overwhelming forces, maybe people would care more. Maybe, if a congressman or a senator had been injured, dragged through the halls to the makeshift gallows or killed, people would give a damn.”

What Happened to Nancy Pelosi in Arizona after the January 6 Referendum: “I Know You Are, but I Know You Don’t Know”

It’s possible that the future of democracy was on the line, and people would be motivated to vote on Tuesday. They would understand that if we don’t preserve “one-person, one-vote”, we will lose control over every other issue.

Until last week’s brutal assault against Paul Pelosi, the husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, political candidates, including many Democrats, avoided talking about January 6. Swing voters are more focused on gas prices and abortion than on other issues.

I don’t think the attack on Paul Pelosi will be a turning point. I’m afraid that politically-inspired violence is only going to escalate. It’s already been normalized.

We are not talking about isolated incidents or violence by our leaders anymore. The 82-year-old husband of the woman who is third in line to the US presidency was beaten in his own home for political reasons, and right-wing media and some Republicans reveled in the violence.

People used to say: “It’s all fun and games until someone gets hurt.” Well, people are getting hurt and some Republicans, including the former president’s obnoxious son, still think it’s all fun and games, condoning and – potentially encouraging – more violence.

I get where Junior is coming from. He knows the violence and threats are working. Local election workers, often selfless senior citizens performing their civic duty, are abandoning polling stations in droves.

Republicans think that voting rights are more important than protecting the ballot from the opposition’s vote.

The Republicans in Arizona are making it so difficult to vote that they are posting armed, masked guards at ballot boxes in the same way the Ku Klux Klan did after the Civil War in order to intimidate people of color. The GOP is using a racist 19th-century playbook to amass power in the 21st century.

I have carried a weapon on a regular basis as a former police officer who has received death threats for speaking frankly about January 6. But if I lived in Arizona, even I would vote elsewhere, rather than confront an armed individual posted in a lawn chair beside a ballot drop box.

Republicans should call out the masked men toting firearms at the ballot box for precisely what they are: Right-wing fanatics trying to intimidate the rest of us. Some GOP officials have spoken out, but the violent know-nothings who now control the party seem to revel in throwing gasoline on the fire.

In my book, I devote an entire chapter to my transformation from a 2016 Trump voter to a 2020 Biden voter. I had been a single-issue voter: law enforcement. My views changed, as I realized I had been deceived by a carnival barker. My point is that people can change, and we need to do whatever it takes to help them – starting with explaining why it’s so important that they vote on Tuesday.

It won’t be easy. I have found that it is more difficult to fool the American people than it is to get them to realize they have been deceived. I don’t believe that the vast majority of Americans support Trump, but I do believe this majority is indifferent to the pain and suffering that he has caused so many Americans.

There are plenty of reasons to fear Trump and his bullies. I think indifference will be the biggest threat to democracy, because of its downfall as a nation. We don’t seem to care enough to pay attention to what’s happening to our country.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/03/opinions/voter-apathy-january-6-pelosi-election-vote-fanone/index.html

The Twitter Files: The Case against the Trump Campaign on Twitter and the News Media after the Musk-Biden Electoral Scenario

I know people are busy. There are a million distractions. Musk was the owner of the social networking site. Tom and Giselle are getting divorced. A person is sharing pictures of a baby. The World Series is a big deal.

But Americans need to understand why this election is so different: It is our first chance since January 6, to reject fascism. And it’s perhaps our last chance to preserve democracy.

The Twitter Files, promoted ahead of time by Musk himself, are being hyped as a critical missing piece in all manner of conspiracy theories—from QAnon to debunked claims of electoral fraud, to President Joe Biden’s supposed corrupt practices in Ukraine. In the process, it is ginning up exactly the kind of Twitter traffic that Musk has craved.

The leaked emails gave an idea as to howTwitter suppressed a New York Post story about the copied contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop. They believe the proof that a previously intangible plot was put in place to suppress conservative voices online and prevent Joe Biden from being elected is the crucial validation of the so-called Twitter Files.

One of the lawyers is an enemy of that theory. On Tuesday, Musk abruptly fired him. It shows that the pattern is play to the crowd.

Foreign intelligence officials identified the laptop as possible Russian interference, and major news outlets, unable to corroborate its contents, held off on the story. Twitter went a step further, temporarily forbidding its users from sharing the Post story, even in their DMs.

Fans of Trump suspected there was more to Twitter’s actions. They believed the FBI and the Democratic National Committee, which they believed colluded to rig the 2016 election with allegations of the Trump campaign’s alleged ties to Russia, were meddling in the 2020 vote as well: the Deep State in action.

One Qnon person wrote, “TheTwitter files confirm Q’s entire main narrative.” “Balenciaga confirms the rest.” A message about a fashion brand playing a role in child trafficking was seen more than 100,000 times on Telegram. His account remained suspended despite some hope that it would be restored. The fact that Jack Dorsey used a custom top-level domain for his personal email, despite Taibbi failing to censor it, was seized on by other QAnon content creators.

The Capitol Insurrection: How Donald Trump and Joe Biden Meteorized a Stealth White House, When Congress voted against it

The expected move by the January 6 committee to formally ask the Department of Justice to prosecute former President Donald Trump over his role in the US Capitol insurrection will make history, whether or not charges are ever brought.

The panel is likely to be destroyed by the incoming majority of the House in the month of January because of the lawmakers that voted against certifying the presidential election two years ago.

The committee, made up of seven Democrats and two Republicans who split with their own party to take part, came up with shocking testimony about Donald Trump and his attempts to steal the presidency from Joe Biden.

A Capitol Police officer told of slipping on blood during the melee in the Capitol caused by the ex-president’s mob. A mother and daughter who worked as election workers in Georgia described how they faced racist threats after Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, accused them of vote stealing. Rusty Bowers, the outgoing Republican speaker of the Arizona state House, testified that Trump’s calls for him to meddle with the election were “foreign to my very being.”

Cassidy Hutchinson, a Republican, testified about his assault on the Constitution, often, because he was with some people in the West Wing who were with Trump. The ex-aide to White House chief of staff Mark Meadows recalled, “It was unpatriotic. It was un-American. The Capitol building was defaced over a lie.

From the moment that conservative retired federal judge J. Michael Luttig warned in a June committee hearing that Trump and supporters still posed “a clear and present danger to American democracy,” it’s been clear the panel believes that Trump was in the middle of an alleged election-stealing conspiracy. It is probable that the 45th president, who was impeached over the insurrection, would not be referred to the DOJ for criminal action.

Furthermore, the committee contended in its hearings that Trump also helped to plot a nefarious scheme to use fake electors to subvert the election in Congress. When those efforts failed, after then-Vice President Mike Pence refused to wield powers he did not have, the committee argued that Trump called a mob to Washington and incited a vicious attack on the Capitol. Then, committee members argued, his inaction as the violence raged amounted to desecrating his sworn duty to protect Congress, the Constitution and the rule of law.

This person tried to force the state to find votes that didn’t exist. This is someone who tried to interfere with a joint session, even inciting a mob to attack the Capitol,” Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff, the chair of the House Intelligence Committee and a member of the January 6 committee, said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday. “If that’s not criminal, then I don’t know what it is.

The committee can’t decide the fate of its work. The panel cannot Force the Justice Department to open a prosecution of the former president, whose 2024 campaign has guarantees the divisions sparked by January 6 will persist in another US election.

Could the act of sending criminal referrals to the DOJ risk furthering the perception of politicization of separate investigations into the aftermath of January 6?

Will an impression that Trump is being hounded by any referrals nearly two years after he left office help rally Republicans to his misfiring 2024 campaign?

And do Americans as a nation, with high inflation and the aftermath of a once-in-a-century pandemic, really pay attention to events that rattled us two years ago?

The report can now be used to convince the public, promote reform, and make the case for accountability. Over the last 50 years, special commissions and independent prosecutors have sought to hold the executive branch accountable for corruption and failures, and investigative journalists have done the same. The Post-watergate era held out the potential for reform, as Congress created new constraints and oversight mechanisms and was used for political retribution.

The 2020 Election Fraud Investigation Committee: Report on the 2018 Midterm Election and Summary of the 2020 Insights from Joe Biden (R-Illino)

Still, Americans rejected many of Trump’s midterm candidates in swing state races who had amplified his false claims of 2020 election fraud, suggesting some desire to protect American democracy.

It is not possible to quantify how voters were impacted by the work of the committee. But it kept evidence of Trump’s insurrection in the news all this year, even as the ex-president launched a new campaign seen by many observers as a way to cast the probes into his conduct as politically motivated persecution. This is important since some pro-Trump Republicans are trying to distort what happened in the Capitol attack.

“This is a massive investigation that the committee has undertook. A lot of witnesses are being identified, according to a former federal prosecutor.

I think that the detail associated with the referrals and report will give a glimpse into the future of DOJ. DOJ has been kind of late to this party and they are playing catch-up but that detail could be very helpful to them and will put a lot of pressure on them as well.”

If nothing else, future generations will be able to judge the determination of the panel members, especially its two Republicans, and the courage of witnesses who told the truth to try save democracy.

We are living in a world in which a lie is Trump’struth and democracy is being challenged by authoritarianism, said the Illinois Republican.

“If we, America’s elected leaders, do not search within ourselves for a way out, I fear that this great experiment will fall into the ash heap of history.”

The committee demonstrated its seriousness of purpose by refusing to put forth a laundry list of defendants. The committee members have all along thought as legislators and public educators, but also have put themselves in the minds of prosecutors. That led them to rightly focus on a short list of prospective defendants against whom the evidence is most damning, providing critical context to the prosecutors. The best cases are the ones the prosecutors can actually win, and that’s why they focus on them.

The committee’s report released Thursday didn’t contain any new bombshells, but instead focused on the detail and depth of its work across its investigation.

The report offered the most comprehensive account to date of what transpired in the two months between Election Day on November 3, 2020, and Joe Biden’s inauguration on January 20, 2021.

It’s a narrative that expands upon the committee’s public hearings over the summer, walking readers step-by-step through the various schemes Trump orchestrated and the help he had from allies inside and outside his administration.

The final report offers a definitive picture of the attack on Congress, contributing factors within American discourse, as well as law enforcement readiness and failures.

The committee interviewed the mayor and police force heads of DC as they were directing law enforcement response.

The review of the response of the DC National Guard to the Capitol was one of the things the select committee interviewed 24 witnesses and reviewed 37,000 pages of documents.

The committee was told, for instance, that commander of the DC National Guard, Major Gen. William Walker, “strongly” considered deploying troops to the US Capitol on the afternoon of January 6 without approval from his superiors even if it meant he would have to resign the next day.

The committee was not able to corroborate a secondhand account from former Trump aide Cassidy Hutchinson that she was told Trump lunged at his lead Secret Service agent while in his presidential SUV on January 6 and tried to grab the steering wheel because he was angry he wasn’t being taken to the Capitol.

The panel says that “Engel had not characterized the exchange in the vehicle as she had heard it from Tony.” Hutchinson also said that he did not recall the president gesturing towards her.

But, the driver described Trump as “animated and irritated,” and testified that Trump said shortly after getting in the vehicle, “I’m the President and I’ll decide where I get to go.”

The House Committee on the December 6, 2016 Insurrection: Report on a Report on an Insight from the House of Representatives

The report points out how the court fights the House waged helped the committee flesh out its story on January 6.

The report included some new details from the emails, including how Eastman emailed Trump’s assistant the day he drafted his memo that falsely claimed Pence could block certification of the election on January 6. Eastman received a call from the White House switchboard shortly thereafter, according to phone records the committee obtained.

In addition to its summary and report released this week, the committee also started rolling out some of the transcripts from closed-door depositions, including interviews with numerous witnesses who invoked their Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination as well as bombshell testimony from Hutchinson.

There are more transcripts expected in the committee’s final days from other witness testimony, teasing out evermore details in the hours before the committee is dissolved, as is expected in the new Congress.

GOP lawmakers and Trump, who is also facing legal scrutiny regarding his role in the January 6 insurrection and his attempt to overturn the 2020 election, will be eagerly waiting for their release.

The January 6 commission is in danger due to this. If reelected, Trump would consider pardoning those involved in the insurrection, since he has pardoned political allies while in office.

When was Samuel Fletcher Cheney? Reports of the Church Committee on 1907-1975 During the Civil War and the Rise and Fall of the United States

In making these referrals, the committee was certainly considering the past as well. Representative Liz Cheney spoke movingly of her great-great-grandfather, Samuel Fletcher Cheney, who served in the Union’s 21st Regiment, Ohio Infantry, during the Civil War. After the war, he marched with his fellow soldiers in the Grand Review of the Armies, passing President Andrew Johnson in the reviewing stand. She might have stated that Johnson, the 17th president of the US, would be impeached. Like Donald Trump. Like Donald Trump, he was acquitted.

Johnson went back to Tennessee to plot his comeback after Grant’s election in 1868. It wouldn’t be easy since many of the people he brought together hated him and didn’t want anything to do with him. It was not illegal.

But sales and awards, while signs of public interest and literary merit, are not the best measures of a report’s success. Accountability and reforms are what matters the most. Intelligence agencies like the Central Intelligence Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation and National Security Agency were brought down by the Church Committee. In the case of the Tower Commission and Independent Counsel reports that followed the Iran-Contra affair, however, accountability was short-circuited.

These high-profile reports often captured public attention for the secrets they revealed. The Church Committee report, the result of investigations in the mid-1970s into the intelligence community, exposed wide-ranging wrongdoing: assassination attempts, support for international coups, drug experiments, domestic spying. It led then-President Gerald Ford to issue an executive order barring political assassinations, but it also broke the reign of secrecy that had allowed intelligence operatives to act in lawless and often bizarre ways.

The reports were in part for their revelations but also for their style. The Starr Report contained information about the President Clintons sexual relationships and his efforts to hide them. It became a top seller. As did the 9/11 Commission Report, which presented the details of the terror attacks and their causes in such captivating detail that it not only sold briskly, but it was a finalist for the National Book Awards. (The report on the Attica prison uprising, written for a state-level commission in 1972, was also a finalist for the prestigious prize.)

The deals that the Reagan administration made with Libya and other countries resulted in many resignations, indictments and convictions. But waning public interest and a flurry of presidential pardons allowed some implicated government officials to not only walk free but to return to high-profile careers within the Republican Party and conservative movement. The Iran-Contra cover-up has been going on for more than six years and it has now been concluded, according to the special prosecutor.

Hutchinson spoke about her journey in becoming the star witness of the hearing in her newly released testimony. Her first two depositions were not very good as she followed her lawyers instructions to say she couldn’t remember most of the questions. The problem was that she had a clear recollection of the events of that day, but she could not remember much from prior to that day.

She realized that she had failed the mirror test when she realized that she didn’t like who she was. “I was disappointed in myself,” she told the committee. “I was frustrated with myself. To be blunt, I was kind of disgusted with myself. I became somebody I never thought that I would become.”

The “Dangering” of the State of the Capitol: What has the American Government Learned about the Insurrection?

I was locked up in my home office and holed up in a windowless cube for 12 months, investigating the attack on the United States Capitol. When it was released, the press described it as “monumental.” The paper dubbed it “damning.” And it was — for former President Donald Trump, since he bears primary responsibility for the attempted insurrection. But the report didn’t tell the whole story.

The other forces beyond the former president contributed to the radicalization of thousands of people into believing that they needed to attack the seat of American democracy. To protect our democracy, we need to understand how those people lost their faith in our governing institutions.