Seventh Hearing:
“Lies, Deceit and Snake Oil”
Cipollone defended Trump during his first impeachment.
The seventh hearing of the January 6 Committee is in the books. If Ex-President Blubber was watching, you know he has another name to add to his growing “Enemies of the People” list.
That would be: former White House Chief Counsel Pat Cipollone.
If he watched (and based on his rants after every hearing so far) he either does, or aides provide him with the Cliff Notes version, he had to have started boiling from the start. Rep. Liz Cheney, his nemesis in the Republican Party, announced to those in the hearing room or watching on TV that Mr. Cipollone’s testimony “met our expectations.”
(This blogger cans say he also met mine.)
Already, she explained, the hearings have forced Trump defenders to draw new lines. Now they try to claim that he wasn’t to blame for fomenting insurrection. Incompetent advisors were at fault. Mr. Trump was “badly served.” Rep. Cheney was having nothing of it. “The president,” she said, is “a 76-year-old man, not an impressionable child.” Although, if you’ve seen him in action, you might think he was. No. Trump knew his lies about a stolen election were lies. He tells those lies still. Millions put their “faith and their trust in Donald Trump,” she said. In many cases, he led them to personal ruin, including one of the witnesses for the day, and nearly ruined democracy itself.
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Once again, the Committee wove a powerful narrative, with major players fleshing out details, and Cipollone, who finally agreed last Friday to testify, as the hero of the tale. 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.”
He still hasn’t.
“Everybody is obligated to abide by the rulings of the courts.”
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”) was sometimes careful in what he said. He could not, for example, repeat anything he said directly to the president, or that the president said to him. Client-attorney privilege, after all, does prevail; and executive privilege for a President of the United States is real. So investigators asked him to comment on testimony from previous witnesses, like former Attorney General Bill Barr. Did Cipollone agree with Barr, who said that in November-December 2020, he had three times told Trump there was no significant evidence of voter fraud. Was Barr correct? “Yes,” Cipollone replied. “I agreed with that.”
In a brief conversation as early as November 23, 2020, Cipollone said he talked with White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. Meadows told him that he believed Trump should concede and “exit gracefully” from the White House.
Cipollone consistently bolstered the testimony of witnesses and the previous hearings. He, too, believed Trump should have conceded by that point. Which previous witnesses were being bolstered? Pretty much all of the 27 main witnesses who had come before. Cipollone was asked about Trump’s legal team – and their near-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.”
We already know 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 them. Such repeated lies, Barr said (although he did not use the word “lies”) were, he told the president, “doing great, great disservice to the country.”
Again, Cipollone could not say what he told the president. Again, he made his position clear in other ways. “It is fair to say that I agreed with Attorney General Barr,” he explained.
Trump had suggested in a December 13 meeting with Barr, that he order the Justice Department to seize “suspect” voting machines.
The attorney general 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,” sort of his own Robert Mueller, except not interested in the 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.
Jason Miller (still a loyal sycophant employed by Trump World) appeared on screen 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, and “to say that it was thin is probably an understatement.”
Cassidy Hutchinson, the star of the sixth hearing, was shown in pieces, adding detail to the story. 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.”
She did not indicate that she believed that was a legitimate goal.
Screaming, profanity, and threats of violence.
A large portion 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, and Powell, Giuliani, General Michael T. Flynn, and Patrick Byrne, the 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 grumbled that Cipollone “probably set a land speed record” getting down to the Oval Office to intervene.
Cipollone was backed up by two other members of the White House Counsel’s Office, Eric Herschmann and Derek Lyons. None of those three could testify as to what Mr. Trump said. They could say what they thought of the group of outsiders. Flynn, we know, has made no bones about where he stood. He was urging the President of the United States 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 testified. He scoffed at evidence Flynn said he had, proving voter fraud. He waved around a diagram that showed all kinds of links to foreign nations – and somehow proved that voting machines could be controlled by hacking thermostats. Participants in the meeting changed locations several times, and the meeting dragged on past midnight. At times the shouting was so loud, the entire West Wing was soon alerted. Hutchinson sent out a text at one point, stating simply, “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 probably thrown their personal belongings out after them.
A second message from Hutchinson was shown, up on the big screen the January 6 Committee employs. 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.
What about Powell – and her “evidence” of massive voter fraud – and was she someone a sane person would trust? We know U.S. District Judge Linda Parker 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 that she described as “a historic and profound abuse of the judicial process.” We know Powell’s being sued for defaming the Dominion Voting Systems company – and sued for $1.3 billion. And we know, since she has no real evidence, even now, to prove that the machines were fixed, that she has adopted an interesting line of defense. “No reasonable person,” her lawyers insist, “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 interest to keep spreading the “stolen election” lies.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, had testified in a previous hearing. As he put it on March 23, 2021, 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, of course, had explained to the Committee, in detail, how claims of voter fraud in Georgia, pushed by Powell and others, were repeatedly debunked.
In any case, by late December 2020, President Trump’s plans to gain a second term that most of his close advisors have testified they knew he did not deserve, had been thwarted in several ways.
PLAN A: This plan involved filing dozens of legal challenges in state and federal courts. That plan failed when, in 61 of 62 cases, judges ruled against Team Trump.
PLAN B: The second plan involved having the Department of Defense seize the voting machines. Then Trump could claim the election was rigged – and probably throw all the machines into the ocean.
DOD declined to be involved.
PLAN C: Okay, then – this plan hinged on having the Justice Department seize the machines, instead. Then Trump and his allies would demand some sort of “redo” of the election in several key states. Attorney General Barr refused to have any role and, effective December 14, 2020, resigned his post.
PLAN D: With the president growing ever more desperate, as laid out in a previous hearing, under this plan Trump would fire Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, after he also said there was no evidence of significant voter fraud. Rosen would be replaced by a sycophant at DOJ, who would do exactly as the president demanded. That plan was foiled when almost everyone at the top levels of Justice threatened to resign.
PLAN E: Trump would call on his supporters to descend on Washington D.C. on January 6. They would stir up so much chaos that either Congress would be cowed, or Trump would have cover to declare martial law.
Plan D was still percolating when Plan E, was set in motion in the early hours of December 19, soon after Mark Meadows led Rudy out into the chill Washington night. At 1:42 a.m., on the morning of December 19, a restless, angry president issued this fiery tweet:
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“‘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 they had gathered showed, the president’s focus changed. The danger became more acute. Radical right-wing groups began to align. It was agreed that they would flood the capital on that day. “What are you wearing?” they began to ask each other. “What should we bring?” “Where do we meet up?” on that day.
Word quickly spread. 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 and help storm the halls of Congress, put out this tweet the 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 and it’s going to be ‘wild.’” Alex Jones broadcast the same appeal, the same day to his Infowars fans. The president was calling them to be in D.C. on that day. Other right wing leaders picked up and put out the same call.
Violent rhetoric in chat rooms, and on social media platforms now ramped up. “Bring handcuffs and wait near the tunnels,” which led 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 another Trump fan. “Is this the 6th D-Day?” inquired another. “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,” another 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? The average democrat is a traitor. They do not care about election fraud. The punishment for treason is death,” said one crazed right-winger. A second Trump supporter was equally anxious to clear the political field of Trump’s foes. “It’s time for the DAY OF THE ROPE! WHITE REVOLUTION IS THE ONLY SOLUTION!”
So the people who would be coming to Washington D.C. were primed. Revolution for some. Racism for others. Many of them had simply been fooled by all the stolen election lies. As Rep. Jamie Raskin explained, the Oath Keepers were clear. In a series of private messages, he said, 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 included: 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 Rep.-elect Marjorie Taylor Greene.
PLAN F was now discussed – that plan being for 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 this. Pence later determined (or probably understood at that very moment) that the U.S. Constitution would have granted no one person unilateral power to overturn the certification of the state’s electoral votes.
We know now. On several occasions before January 6, on the morning of that day again, he made it clear to President Trump. He would open and count the electoral votes as they had been submitted by the 50 states and the District of Columbia. And he would not set any aside, in an effort to delay the final results, and help Trump out. Members of the panel had questioned Cipollone in regard to Mr. Pence. The vice president he had replied, “did what was legal.”
Then he asked to say more. “I think the vice president did the right thing. I think he did the courageous thing. I have great respect for the vice president…I think he did a great service for the country. I think I suggested to somebody that he should be given the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his actions,” he added.
In the days leading up to the riot, concern was growing on many fronts. Katrina Pierson, who was helping organize the “Stop the Steal” events for that day, 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 on the 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. This question – of when Trump planned to march, and how much damage he was prepared to accept – will likely be a focus of the eight hearing, probably next week. Meadows, as we have said, claimed Trump never really planned to go to the Capitol on Jan. 6. 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 it clear. The plan to march on January 6 was already afoot.
On January 4, another organizer of the “Stop the Steal” events sent a message to Mike Lindell, another one of the craziest supporters of President Trump. The plan to march to the Capitol was in the works – but had to remain secret.
“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, Trump himself knew. January 6 was going to be wild.
How “wild” was the only question.
The wilder the better, it seemed to President 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 not far from 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.” If anyone stopped to consider how much bloodshed was required in 1776, before the Thirteen Colonies could break away from British control, no one at the rally seemed to care.
Multiple White House aides testified to having been called into a meeting by President Trump at the same time. They could hear the shouts of the crowd and patriotic and rock music being blasted in the distance. According to one aide, Trump “was in a very, very good mood,” “a fantastic mood,” she said. He asked the 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, rigged election was a lie.
Meanwhile, multiple drafts of the president’s speech for January 6 were being prepared. On the morning of the riot, we know Trump spoke with White House advisor Stephen Miller from 9:52 to 10:18.
Not long after, new language was inserted into the speech. Now it read:
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.
The president was furious. He called Pence a “wimp” and a “pussy.”
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.
In the end, Trump ad-libbed repeatedly during what became an incendiary January 6 speech. He attacked Pence or questioned his courage multiple times. He talked about “fighting like hell” – words not in the prepared speech. He ad-libbed again, shouting that if his people wouldn’t fight, they “might not have a country anymore.”
Then he called on everyone to march to Capitol Hill – which had been secretly planned. He shouted that he would march along. At that point, you could say, Trump’s allies had poured out all the gasoline they could find.
Now the 45th President of the United States – and possibly the last, had Trump had his way – lit the match.
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“I feel like I had horse blinders on.”
As with all the hearings, live witnesses also 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, 2021? “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?
“Well, basically,” he 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, has done grave damage to his family and overturned his life. He was fired from his job of 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 incredibly hard.) Ayres sounded contrite. He sounded sincere. His cadences and accent made him sound like some of the people I know here in Ohio, some of whom still believe Trump’s lies.
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.”
Mr. Ayres plead guilty to one count of “disruptive or disorderly conduct in a restricted building,” on June 8. He awaits sentencing in his case. He could end up in jail for a year, and could be fined $100,000.
It’s more likely that he will get something in the range of 30 days’ home confinement, a year of probation, and a fine of $1,000, in line with similar cases, where no violence or property damage occurred.
After the hearing ended, Ayres went over to a group of police officers that had been badly 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.
Trump?
He still sits, unscathed, at Mar-a-Lago, goes golfing whenever the mood strikes, still lies about the stolen election. He’s still plotting his next move.
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Trump at Mar-a-Lago this past Easter. |
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“Language is the soil of thought.”
The final witness was Jason Van Tatenhove, former spokesman for the radical right-wing group, the Oath Keepers.
As noted in Part I of this massive series of posts, I have always liked a quote by James Russell Lowell, an abolitionist poet. “Language is the soil of thought,” he once wrote, and in the 1850s, abolitionists used language to stir the hearts of many Americans to join the fight against slavery.
From the moment he rode down the escalator in 2015, Donald Trump polluted the soil of American political discourse. He sprayed toxic pesticides of hate and fear on all our democratic crops.
Van Tatenhove explained the effects he felt. 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 around that time, and admits he was “swept up” by the rhetoric of Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the group, who supported Bundy’s cause. Van Tatenhove was soon 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; and 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 other 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 from his post.
Today, he warns, the Oath Keepers – who had such a large presence during the January 6 riot, and who had close connections with people like Roger Stone – has 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. For one of the few times, since I’ve been watching hearings, I thought a witness was laying out his own theories and not hard evidence. Yet, what Van Tatenhove had to say still resonated. He said he believed Rhodes and his group would have seen that 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, for on January 6, the bloodshed might have been far worse. Trump and a wide array of his 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 the nation, if the snake oil salesman ever saw the inside of the Oval Office again.
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