“This is NEW and vital testimony. The idea that the Jan 6 peaceful rally spontaneously and accidentally turning into a violent mob at the Capitol is turned on its head here.” – Todd Zwillich, Vice News
“The potential for violence was so much more, and I fear for this next election cycle.” – Select Committee Witness and former Oath Keeper Jason Van Tatenhove
“He’s still committing crimes.” – Jennifer Rubin on Donald Trump, The Washington Post
PRESS RELEASE Contact: [email protected]
For Immediate Release
Date: July 12, 2022
Washington, DC – Here’s what journalists, legal experts, pundits, and others are saying about the January 6th Select Committee’s seventh hearing.
Todd Zwillich, Deputy DC Bureau Chief, Vice News, @toddzwillich:
This is NEW and vital testimony. The idea that the Jan 6 peaceful rally spontaneously and accidentally turning into a violent mob at the Capitol is turned on its head here.
Noah Bookbinder, President of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics (CREW), @NoahBookbinder: Significant that after it was made clear to Donald Trump that there was no legal avenue to overturn the election, he then changed course and tweeted to invite the mob to Washington. He very consciously chose to turn to mob violence as his next tactic. He knew what he was doing.
Taegan Goddard, Political Wire, @rgoodlaw: Trump not only summoned the mob, as we learned in the first half of today’s hearing, but he planned ahead of time to unleash them on the Capitol to disrupt the counting of electoral votes.
Jake Sherman, Punchbowl News Founder, @JakeSherman: quite the kicker to today’s hearing. Liz Cheney says Trump himself tried to reach out to a Jan. 6 committee witness.
Jennifer Rubin, Washington Post Opinion Writer, @JRubinBlogger:
oh wow. Committee has direct attempt from TRUMP to influence a witness. Sent over to DOJ. He’s still committing crimes…
Nicole Wallace, Host, MSNBC (Video): Arguably the most dramatic public hearing of the
January 6th Select Committee. It was jaw dropping until the very last moment. Some big news, a bomb shell there dropped by Congresswoman Liz Cheney at the end, but most of the hearing drilled down what the members of the Select Committee have for months now been describing as the evidence they garnered to describe the marshaling of the mob.
Robert Maguire, CREW Research Director, @RobertMaguire_: Texts from My Pillow guy and Ali Alexander show that the call to march to the Capitol wasn’t in any way “spontaneous.” Committee absolutely destroying that narrative.
Tom Dupree, Former Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General under George Bush, Fox News (Video): I think the committee succeeded today in establishing links that we hadn’t previously known about between the White House and some of these militia groups.
Ryan Goodman, Former DOD Special Counsel, @rgoodlaw:
It
was
this
obvious.
Brad Parscale private text message to Katrina Pierson, Jan. 6, 2021:
“This is about trump pushing for uncertainty in our country.”
“A sitting president asking for civil war.”
Manu Raju, CNN Chief Congressional Correspondent, @mkraju: Committee shows evidence rally organizers and others were under belief Trump would order them to go to Capitol on Jan. 6.
Tom LoBianco, Yahoo News Political Reporter, @tomlobianco:
DC homeland security chief testifies that after Trump’s Dec 19 tweet, they saw difft extremist groups start aligning and planning … using “pre-operational intelligence” … “and that is something that is clearly alarming”
Center for American Progress Action, @CAPAction: Trump tried to make his call for supporters to march to the Capitol seem spontaneous, but his own records tell a different story. It was a deliberate strategy.
Norm Eisen, former U.S. Ambassador and Brookings Senior Fellow, @NormEisen:
The 12/19 tweet by itself would not make Trump accountable for the violent understanding of the people who responded to it. But Cassidy and others have already testified as to Trump’s violent intent. After the break we will undoubtedly get more proof
Wendy Weiser @WendyRWeiser: It doesn’t lose its shock value: The President of the United States considered a plan to order the Secretary of Defense to seize voting machines and to appoint Sidney Powell as a special counsel to oversee criminal charges.
Harry Litman, former U.S. Attorney, @harrylitman: Meadows either breathtakingly incompetent, or criminal, or both.
Andrea Mitchell, Chief Washington Correspondent, MSNBC (Video): I have witnessed so many hearings, going all the way back, Iran-Contra, I have never seen anything like this.
Nicholas Wu, Politico Congressional reporter, @nicholaswu12:
Cheney is pre-empting the argument that Trump was deceived by outside advisers/’crazies’
“it’s nonsense. President Trump is a 76 year old man, not an impressionable child.”
Kyle Griffin, MSNBC Executive Producer, @kylegriffin1: Jan. 6 rioter confirms that he and other rioters left when Trump told them to go home. Trump could have told the rioters hours earlier to leave and he refused.
Tim Miller, Writer at The Bulwark, @Timodc: Some political context for today’s January 6th meetings. All the preposterous lies, the Sidney Powell weirdness featured today: it is all being repeated as fact to this day by nearly every major Republican running for major office. Mass formation psychosis.
Lisa Gilbert, Executive Vice President at Public Citizen, @Lisa_PubCitizen:
Scary statements from Jason Von (sic) Tatenhove:
“We’ve been lucky that we haven’t seen more bloodshed yet.”
“The potential for violence was so much more, & I fear for this next election cycle.”
“What else is he [Trump] going to do if he wins again.”
Noah Bookbinder, CREW President, @NoahBookbinder:
Congressman Raskin is right that authoritarians don’t recognize the validity of elections that they lose and see political violence as legitimate. That is who Donald Trump is and where he and his allies are still headed. We need to protect the country from them.
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The Select Committee will continue to lay out its extensive evidence gathered by non-partisan career prosecutors proving that Trump and his MAGA allies planned, promoted, and paid for a criminal conspiracy to overturn an election they knew they’d lost.
This criminal conspiracy extends well beyond the violence perpetrated on January 6, 2021, that injured 140 police officers, including making it harder for people to vote, attempting to appoint bogus electors to overturn the will of voters, and intimidating state officials to change the results in contested states.
Getting to the truth during these hearings and then demanding accountability at the courts and the ballot box is how we stop the current MAGA campaign to sabotage future elections by changing state laws, threatening state officials, and packing election administration offices so that they can have the final say over election results – even when they lose.
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