Part XIII: "Not an Impressionable Child"

“Not an Impressionable Child.”

__________

“Everybody, everybody is obligated to abide by the rulings of the courts.” 

White House Chief Counsel Pat Cipollone.

__________ 

Barr, left, had three times told Trump that he lost.

THE SEVENTH HEARING of the January 6 Committee is now in the books. If Mr. Trump was watching, you knew he had another name to add to his ever-growing “Enemies of the People” list. That would be former White House Chief Counsel Pat Cipollone.

 

Based on Trump’s Twitter rants, Trump did tune in, or aides provided him with Cliff Notes, because he was boiling from the start. Rep. Liz Cheney, his nemesis in the GOP, announced to those in the hearing room or watching on TV that Mr. Cipollone’s testimony “met our expectations.” 

The hearings, she said, had already forced Trump defenders to draw new lines. Now they had to claim that he wasn’t to blame for fomenting insurrection. Incompetent advisors were responsible! Mr. Trump, they said, had been “badly served.” 

Rep. Cheney was having none of it. “The president,” she said, is “a 76-year-old man, not an impressionable child.” 

Millions put their “faith and their trust in Donald Trump,” she continued. In many cases, he led them to personal ruin (including one of the witnesses for the day), and nearly destroyed democracy itself. 

 

“It was time for him to acknowledge that Biden had won.” 

Once again, the Committee wove a powerful narrative, with major players fleshing out details, and Cipollone, who had agreed to testify only days before, holding center stage. Eugene Scalia, former Labor Secretary in the Trump administration, had a cameo role. He testified, on tape, that by mid-December 2020, it was clear. “It was time,” he said of Trump, “for him to acknowledge that Biden had won.” 

(When I edit this post in March 2024, Trump has not.)

 

 Cipollone’s testimony had been taped. As White House Chief Counsel (I noticed on Fox News later that he was described only as a “White House lawyer”), Cipollone was careful in what he said. He could not repeat anything he said directly to the president, or anything the president said to him. Client-attorney privilege, after all, does prevail. 

Executive privilege for a President of the United States is also necessary and real. So investigators asked him to comment on testimony from previous witnesses, like former Attorney General Barr. 

Did Cipollone agree with Barr, who said that in November-December 2020, he had repeatedly told Trump there was no significant evidence of voter fraud. Was Barr correct? “Yes,” Cipollone replied. “I agreed with that.” 

In a brief conversation on November 23, 2020, Cipollone said he talked with White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. Meadows told him he believed Trump should concede and “exit gracefully” from the White House. 

Cipollone consistently bolstered the testimony of previous witnesses. He was asked about Trump’s legal team – and their perfect record of defeats in 62 court cases challenging election results. Was Trump obligated to abide by the rulings of the courts? The former White House chief counsel seemed all too happy to respond. “Everybody,” he said. “Everybody is obligated to abide by the rulings of the courts.” 

Mr. Cipollone, seen here during Trump's second impeachment.
He was the president's top lawyer.

 

“Great, great disservice to the country.” 

We already knew that Barr had told Trump, three times, by December 13, that the Justice Department had found no evidence of serious voter fraud. He called such claims, made by Trump, pushed by Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, “crazy stuff.” Yet these claims had been “made in such a sensational way” that millions of Americans believed. Such repeated lies, Barr said (although he did not use the word “lies”) he told the president, were “doing great, great disservice to the country.” 

Again, Cipollone could not say what he told the president. Now he made his position clear. “It is fair to say that I agreed with Attorney General Barr [emphasis added, unless otherwise noted],” he explained. 

Trump had suggested in a December 13 meeting with Barr, that he order the Justice Department to seize “suspect” voting machines. 

Barr declined. 

Yet, on December 16, Trump’s top enablers drafted a letter. This time, the idea was to have the Department of Defense seize the machines. Trump also suggested making Sidney Powell a “Special Counsel,” his own Robert Mueller if you will, except not interested in any truth. When asked what he thought of that harebrained idea, Cipollone did not hold back. “I was vehemently opposed,” he told investigators. “I did not think she should be appointed to anything.” 

He was asked to elaborate on why he called Powell’s appointment a “terrible idea.” “I don’t even understand why we have to tell you that’s a bad idea for the country, it’s a terrible idea,” he said again. 

As of October 20, 2023, we know that Powell pled guilty in the Georgia election fraud case. We also know that with Powell flipping, the former Golfer-in-Chief, Donald J. Trump, has insisted that Powell was never his lawyer and he wouldn’t recognize her if he ran over her with his golf cart. 

The blogger is joking (sort of). What the former president actually said, on Truth Social on October 22, 2023, was this: 

Despite the Fake News reports to the contrary, and without even reaching out to ask the Trump Campaign, MS. POWELL WAS NOT MY ATTORNEY, AND NEVER WAS. In fact, she would have been conflicted. Ms. Powell did a valiant job of representing a very unfairly treated and governmentally abused General Mike Flynn, but to no avail. His prosecution, despite the facts, was ruthless.

 

(On two separate occasions, Flynn admitted he committed a felony.)

 

(Trump granted him a Golden Pardon in December 2020.) 

 

Jason Miller appeared on the big screen the January 6 Committee used, next. Did Rudy and Sidney and other Trump outside lawyers really have evidence at that point to prove massive voter fraud? No, he admitted, they did not, adding that “to say that it [their evidence] was thin is probably an understatement.” 

Cassidy Hutchinson, star of the sixth hearing, was shown in short clips, adding detail to the narrative. By mid-December, commenting on Mark Meadows and his role, she said, “I perceived that his goal in all this was to keep Trump in office.” 

 

Six hours of heated argument. 

A large part of the hearing was devoted to dissecting an explosive meeting at the White House, on the evening of December 18, 2020. The meeting was not on the official schedule. Powell, Giuliani, General Flynn, and Patrick Byrne, former CEO of Overstock.com., simply showed up and gained entrance to the White House with the help of a junior staffer. 

What followed would be six hours of heated argument, punctuated by screaming, profanity, and threats of violence. None of the regular White House legal staff had been notified about the meeting. 

When asked about that, Powell, in televised testimony, grumbled that Cipollone “probably set a land speed record” getting down to the Oval Office to intervene. 

Cipollone was backed up that night, and in subsequent testimony, by two members of the White House Counsel’s Office, Eric Herschmann and Derek Lyons. None of the three could testify as to what Mr. Trump said. Again: executive privilege. 

They could say what they thought of the outsiders who had magically appeared. Flynn made no bones about where he stood. He had been urging the president to declare martial law. Cipollone’s disdain was clear. “I don’t think any of these people were providing the president with good advice,” he told the members of the investigating panel. He scoffed at evidence Flynn said he had, proving voter fraud. The general had waved around a diagram that showed all kinds of links to foreign nations – and somehow proved voting machines could be controlled by hacking thermostats!

For real - the people who had Trump's ear were idiots.

 

Participants in the meeting changed locations several times. The argument dragged on past midnight. Shouting was so loud the entire West Wing was on alert. Hutchinson sent out a text at one point: “The West Wing is UNHINGED.” Powell finally left in a huff, but testified later that she would have fired Cipollone, Herschmann, and Lyons on the spot. Then, had she been in charge, she would have had them escorted out of the White House – and thrown their personal belongings out after them. 

(The blogger is joking about the “personal belongings,” serious about everything else.)

 

A second message from Hutchinson was displayed on the big screen behind the January 6 Committee. It was a photo of Mark Meadows leading Rudy Giuliani down a covered portico next to the Rose Garden and ushering him out into the night. The caption read: “I take one photo for Mark of each of his days. Tonight, it was him escorting Rudy off-campus to make sure he didn’t wander back to the Mansion.” 

It was that kind of meeting and that kind of day. 

Joke meme: Gen. Flynn pleads the Fifth.

 

“No reasonable person.” 

What about Powell – and her “evidence” of massive voter fraud – and was she someone a sane person would trust? We knew by this time that U.S. District Judge Linda Parker had ordered Powell and other Team Trump lawyers involved to pay seven-figure legal fees to the State of Michigan for filing what Parker referred to as a “frivolous” legal brief in a voter fraud case. Judge Parker went on to describe the lawsuit they had filed as “a historic and profound abuse of the judicial process.” 

We knew Sidney was being sued for defaming the Dominion Voting Systems company – and sued for $1.3 billion. And we knew, since Powell had no real evidence, to prove that the machines were fixed, that in court she had adopted an interesting line of defense. “No reasonable person,” her lawyers informed the court, “would conclude that [Powell’s] statements were truly statements of fact.” 

Trump? 

Yeah. He believed her. 

Or he said he did because it served his selfish interests to keep spreading the “Stolen Election” myth. 

 

“No facts to begin with.” 

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger had testified in an earlier hearing. As he put it later, in response to another failed voter fraud claim filed by Team Trump in Georgia: “In the face of legal action, Sidney Powell admitted that her effort to make millions lying to the American people had no facts to begin with.” Raffensperger had previously explained to the Committee how claims of voter fraud in Georgia, pushed by Powell and others, had been reduced to legal rubble. 

In any case, by late December 2020, President Trump’s plans to gain a second term that most of his closest advisors had testified they knew he did not deserve, had been thwarted in several ways.

 

PLAN A: File dozens of legal challenges in state and federal court. This plan failed when, in all 62 cases, judges ruled against Team Trump. 

 

PLAN B: Have the Department of Justice seize the voting machines and use the smoke screen created to demand new elections – or throw out the votes from states Team Trump claimed had rigged the vote. Attorney General Barr ruined Plan B when he pointed out that there was no evidence of significant voter fraud. He passed on the opportunity to subvert American democracy and resigned. 

 

PLAN C: Have the Department of Defense (DOD) seize the voting machines. Throw the machines in the ocean. 

Claim victory. 

DOD declined to be involved. 

 

PLAN D: Okay: Ask the Department of Homeland Security to snag the machines. Trump and his allies will then demand some kind of election “redo” in key states. (States Trump lost, only.) 

Homeland Security leaders also passed on the offer. 

 

PLAN E: With the president growing desperate, Trump fires Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, after Rosen insists there is no evidence of significant voter fraud. Rosen is replaced by a sycophant at DOJ, or a baked potato, who will do as the president demands. Plan E is foiled when almost everyone at the top levels of Justice says they will resign if Rosen is replaced by Jeffrey Clark. 

Or a baked potato. 

 

PLAN F: Trump calls on supporters to descend on Washington D.C. on January 6. If they can stir up enough chaos either Congress will be cowed into overturning the electoral count, or Trump will have cover to declare martial law. Plan E is still percolating when Plan F is set in motion, in the early hours of December 19, soon after Mark Meadows escorts Rudy out into the chilly Washington night. 

 

When PLAN E is blown up in a White House meeting on January 3, 2021, PLAN F becomes the last stand, the Final Hope of Donald John Trump. At 1:42 a.m., in the dark hours on December 19, a restless, angry president issues this fiery tweet. He realizes PLAN F may be his only chance:

 

 

 

“‘Will be wild’ means we need volunteers for the firing squad.” 

In the wake of that tweet, members of the January 6 panel explained, and evidence showed, Trump’s focus changed. The danger was acute. Radical right-wing groups began to align. It was agreed that they would flood the capital that day. “What are you wearing?” they began to ask each other online. “What should we bring?” “Where do we meet up?” 

Word spread quickly. At 10:22 a.m. that morning, Kelly Meggs, a leader of the Oath Keepers, announced on Facebook that he had cobbled together “an alliance between the Oath Keepers, Florida 3%ers, and Proud Boys. We have decided to work together and shut this shit down.” 

Kelly O’Brien, who would later show up with bear spray and help storm the Capitol, put out this tweet that same day. “CALLING ALL PATRIOTS!” she wrote. “Be in Washington D.C. January 6. This wasn’t organized by any group. DJT has invited us [emphasis added] and it’s going to be ‘wild.’” 

Alex Jones broadcast the same appeal, the same day, to Infowars fans. The president was calling them to be in D.C. Other right-wing leaders picked up the cry and put out the call. Violent rhetoric in chat rooms, and on social media platforms ramped up. “Bring handcuffs and wait near the tunnels,” which lead inside the Capitol Building, one person tweeted. “Body armor, knuckles, shields, bats, pepper spray, whatever it takes,” suggested another. “JOIN YOUR LOCAL PROUD BOYS ORGANIZATION AS WELL.” “Cops don’t have ‘standing’ if they are laying on the ground in a pool of their own blood,” howled a third Trump fan. 

“Is  this the 6th D-Day?” inquired someone. “Is that why Trump wants everyone there?” “Trump just told us all to come armed.” 

“Fucking A, this is happening,” replied another. 

“It ‘will be wild’ means we need volunteers for the firing squad,” a supporter of the president explained. 

Finally, we had Trump fans offering up their own versions of the “Final Solution” to be implemented on January 6. “Why don’t we just kill them? Every last democrat, down to the last man, woman, and child?” asked one right-winger. “The average democrat is a traitor. They do not care about election fraud. The punishment for treason is death.” 

Yet another Trump supporter was equally willing to clear the political field of Trump’s foes, “It’s time for the DAY OF THE ROPE! WHITE REVOLUTION IS THE ONLY SOLUTION!” he said. So the people who would be coming to Washington D.C. were primed. Revolution for some. Racism for others. Many had simply been swept up in a tidal wave of blatant lies. 

(Any decent president – any decent American – should have called off this crew.) 

 

As Rep. Jamie Raskin, a member of the January 6 Committee, explained, the Oath Keepers were clear. In a series of private messages they prepared to use “lethal force against anyone who tried to remove Trump from office, including the National Guard.” 

On December 21, there was another planning meeting in the White House. This time eleven GOP congressmen and women met with President Trump, led by Rep. Mo Brooks. The others: Rep. Andy Biggs, Rep. Paul Gosar, Rep. Brian Babin, Rep. Matt Gaetz, Rep. Louis Gohmert, Rep. Andy Harris, Rep. Jody Hice, Rep. Jim Jordan, Rep. Scott Perry, and Representative-elect Marjorie Taylor Greene. 

(Brooks now admits Trump asked him to “violate the U.S. Constitution and federal law.”) 

 

“I think he did the courageous thing.” 

During this meeting, a new plan, PLAN G, is discussed. The key to G is to convince Vice President Mike Pence to agree not to count all the electoral votes on January 6. Pence and Meadows sat through the meeting, as did President Trump. What exactly was said, we still don’t know. We do know Pence insisted he would not screw around with the counting of the votes. 

Meanwhile, concern was growing on multiple fronts. Katrina Pierson, who was helping organize the “Stop the Steal” events planned for January 6, warned others that “very, very vicious” crazies were talking about showing up. She emailed Meadows to tell him plans were getting out of hand. Some “very suspect” groups, she said, were mobilizing and planning to show up in force. 

On January 2, she and Meadows talked via phone. By that time, she had been told the President of the United States planned to march to the Capitol, after his big speech at the Ellipse. Meadows, as we have previously noted, has since claimed Trump never really planned to go to the Capitol. But the Committee put up on the big screen for all to see, an official document, because the president had been shown it, which made clear. The plan to march on January 6 was afoot. 

On January 4, another organizer of the “Stop the Steal” events sent a message to Mike Lindell, one of the looniest supporters of President Trump. The plan to march to the Capitol was in the works – but had to remain secret. 

  

How much bloodshed was required in 1776? 

“This stays only between us, we are having a second stage at the Supreme Court again after the ellipse. POTUS is going to have us march there/the Capitol,” Kylie Kremer explained. “It cannot get out about the second stage because people will try and set up another and Sabotage it,” she added. “It can also not get out about the march because I will be in trouble with the national park service and all the agencies but POTUS is going to just call for it “unexpectedly[.]” 

And so the march was planned. 

People close to the president, both inside and outside the White House, his own supporters, and Trump himself knew. January 6 was going to be wild. 

(How “wild” was the only question.) 

 

The wilder the better, it seemed to Mr. Trump. On the morning of January 5, White House call logs show that Steve Bannon talked with him for eleven minutes (8:57-9:08 a.m.) Later, Bannon announced almost gleefully on his podcast, “All hell is going to break loose tomorrow…Strap in.” 

That evening, angry Trump supporters, whipped up by people like General Flynn and Roger Stone, gathered near the White House. Stone warned the audience that they must prevail the following day. They had to stop Congress from certifying the vote, or “the United States will step off into a thousand years of darkness.” 

Alex Jones howled, “1776, 1776, 1776, 1776, 1776,” until the crowd began to chant back, “1776, 1776, 1776.” 

Ray Epps was also there, urging true patriots to march on the morrow. 

(Conspiracy thinkers will later focus only on Epps. They will decide that Epps was an F.B.I. plant, meant to stir up the mob and make the MAGA types look like crazy people.)

 

If anyone had stopped to consider how much bloodshed was required starting in April of 1775, before the Thirteen Colonies could break away from British control, no one at the rally really cared. 

A revolution involves massive bloodshed.

Multiple White House aides testified to having been called into a meeting by President Trump around the same time. They could hear the shouts of the crowd and patriotic and rock music thumping in the distance. According to one aide, Trump “was in a very, very good mood,” “a fantastic mood.” He asked the gathered aides to offer up any ideas they might have on how he could “make the RINOs do the right thing” on January 6. Even many of those aides knew the story of the “Stolen Election” was a lie.  

Meanwhile, multiple drafts of the president’s speech for January 6 were being circulated. On the morning of the riot, Trump spoke with White House advisor Stephen Miller, from 9:52 to 10:18. 

Not long after, new language was inserted. Now the speech read: “And we will see whether Mike Pence enters history as a truly great and courageous leader. All he has to do is refer the illegally-submitted electoral votes back to the states that were given false and fraudulent information where they want to rectify.” 

Cooler heads soon prevailed. Those sentences were excised. Then, at 11:20 a.m. Pence made a last call to Trump for the day. He was firm. He would not set aside any state’s electoral votes. 

A tweet from Robert Gabriel, who began his career in the Trump administration as an aide to Stephen Miller, went out to everyone working to finalize the speech. “REINSERT THE MIKE PENCE LINES. Confirm receipt,” it read. 

 

“Horse blinders on.” 

As with all the hearings, in the seventh, live witnesses appeared, but this time testified only at the end, and only about their links to the riot. The first witness was Steven Ayres, an Ohio man who came to D.C. on January 6, joined the march, entered the Capitol Building, and was subsequently identified and arrested. He had come forward voluntarily to tell his story. Ayres described himself as a “family man,” “a working man, really.” He said he liked to go camping, and enjoyed “playing games” with his son.  

How did he come to be in D.C. on January 6? “I was pretty hardcore” into social media, he said. He believed the “Stolen Election” lies, and “felt like I needed to be down there.” 

“I was very upset,” he added.  

Prior to the attack, Ayres had been clear about why he was going to Washington on that fateful day. On Facebook, on Jan. 4, he wrote:  

History is being made right in front of your eyes! When your grandchildren ask “Where were you when...........happened?” What’s your answer going to be?” The post attaches an image of a poster stating, “January 6th Washington, DC, the president is calling on us to come back to Washington on January 6th for a big protest – ‘Be there, will be wild.’”

 

He was asked why he joined the march to Capitol Hill. Was he planning to march, to enter the building? 

 

“Just following what he said.”

“Well, basically,” Ayres replied, “the president, you know, got everybody riled up, told everybody to head on down. So we basically…just following what he said.” His decision, of course, he explained, had done grave damage to his family and overturned his life. He was fired from his job after twenty years. He had to sell his home. (I felt bad watching him testify, because his wife sat behind him – and for her it had to be hard.) Ayres sounded contrite. He appeared sincere. His cadences and accent made him sound like people I know here in Ohio, many of whom still believe Trump’s bottomless fabrications.  

A questioner on the panel asked Ayres what he would say to others who believed as he once did?  

“I was hanging on every word [Trump] said,” he admitted. “I consider myself a family man, and I love my country…I feel like I had horse blinders on.” He thought a moment and added, “I would tell them to take the blinders off.”  

(It’s not too late, if you love Trump. Take the blinders off!)

Ayres, left, apologizes to one of the officers who was badly injured.

  

(Mr. Ayres plead guilty to one count  of “disruptive or disorderly conduct in a restricted building,” on June 8, 2022.) 

After the hearing ended, Ayres went over to a group of police officers that had been severely injured in the attack, including Sgt. Aquilino Gonell. Officer Gonell had just learned that the injuries he sustained during the assault will never completely heal, and he will no longer be able to perform his duties. The panel pointed him out and highlighted his story (Iraq combat veteran, U.S. Army, sixteen years, now permanently disabled). The TV cameras focused on Gonell, wiping away a tear. Ayres shook his hand and apologized for his part in the disasters of that day.  

Let’s remind the MAGA faithful again: Their False Idol, Donald J. Trump, had insisted after the attack, that the attackers weren’t attackers, and were just “hugging and kissing” the police. 

Gonell was permanently disabled by all those hugs and kisses, and more than 140 police were injured in some way. 

 

“The spark of a civil war.” 

The final witness was Jason Van Tatenhove, former spokesman for the radical right-wing group, the Oath Keepers. 

“Language is the soil of thought,” James Russell Lowell, an abolitionist poet, once wrote. In the 1850s, abolitionists used language to stir the hearts and minds of Americans to join the anti-slavery fight. 

(See for example: Uncle Tom’s Cabin.) 

 

As for Donald Trump, from the moment he rode down the escalator in 2015, he had polluted the soil of American political discourse. Trump dumped toxic chemicals of hate and fear on democratic soil. 

Van Tatenhove explained the effects. He was a journalist who went out to cover a standoff involving a rancher named Cliven Bundy and the federal government over land use in Nevada. He met a number of members of the Oath Keepers, and admits he was “swept up” by the rhetoric of Stewart Rhodes, leader of the group, who supported Bundy’s cause. Van Tatenhove was hired to do graphic design work for the Oath Keepers, to write about their cause – freedom from tyrannical federal control. He had a family to support; now he had a steady income. 

The more he delved into the message Rhodes was selling, the greater became his doubts. Fighting a tyrannical government? Yes. That would be a positive goal. One day, he stumbled into a conversation with four members of the group. They were talking about the Holocaust being a hoax. He testified that he went home that day, told his wife he couldn’t continue, and resigned his post. 

Today, he warned, the Oath Keepers – who had such a large presence during the January 6 riot, and who had close connections with people like Roger Stone – have become a “violent militia.” Over time, he watched them become “radicalized,” “straight-up racist.” They had become a “white nationalist” organization. Their vision for this country, he warned, “doesn’t necessarily include the rule of law.” 

Van Tatenhove was asked, specifically, about Stewart Rhodes’ interest in seeing President Trump invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807, an idea being floated by some of Trump’s most unhinged advisors. It was his opinion that Rhodes and his group would have seen the Insurrection Act as validating their efforts, as cover for violence, opening a path toward their goals. 

Had Trump invoked the Insurrection Act, he believed, it would have been “the spark of a civil war.” 

“We got lucky,” he said. On January 6, the bloodshed might have been much, much worse. Trump and a wide array of enablers, from Alex Jones to Sidney Powell to Rep. Andy Biggs, had been dealing in “lies, deceit, and snake oil.” He said he feared a world in which Trump gained a second term. 

He feared for the future of his three daughters and his granddaughter, and our country, if the snake oil salesman ever saw the inside of the Oval Office again. 

 

BLOGGER’S NOTE (7/23/23): Rhodes has since been tried for his role in planning the January 6 attack. He and several co-defendants were all found guilty, and he is currently serving an eighteen-year prison sentence for his crimes.