Skip to main content
Defend Our Country Digest

Defend Our Country Digest — June 29, 2022

By June 29, 2022No Comments

Driving the Day: 

Must Read Stories

Explosive January 6 Testimony Reveals Trump Urged Armed Supporters To March On The Capitol And Forcibly Tried To Go There Himself 

  • New York Times: Trump Urged Armed Supporters to Capitol, White House Aide Testifies: The first White House aide to testify publicly before the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack provided a damning account on Tuesday of how former President Donald J. Trump, knowing his supporters were armed and threatening violence, urged them to march to the Capitol and sought to join them there, privately siding with them as they stormed the building and called for the hanging of the vice president. The testimony from the aide, Cassidy Hutchinson, was extraordinary even by the standards of Mr. Trump’s norm-busting presidency and the inquiry’s remarkable string of revelations this month. In fly-on-the-wall anecdotes delivered in a quiet voice, she described how frantic West Wing aides failed to stop Mr. Trump from encouraging the violence or persuade him to try to end it, and how the White House’s top lawyer feared that Mr. Trump might be committing crimes as he steered the country to the brink of a constitutional crisis. Drawing from conversations she said she overheard in the West Wing and others contemporaneously relayed to her by top officials, Ms. Hutchinson, a 26-year-old who was an aide to Mark Meadows, Mr. Trump’s final chief of staff, provided crucial details about what the former president was doing and saying before and during the riot. She painted a portrait of an unhinged president obsessed with clinging to power and appearing strong, and willing to tolerate violence as a result — as long as it was not directed at him. “They’re not here to hurt me,” she testified that Mr. Trump said as he demanded that security checkpoints be removed outside his rally on the Ellipse on Jan. 6, knowing that many of his supporters were armed and threatening violence. “Take the f-ing mags away. Let my people in. They can march to the Capitol from here.”
  • CNN: Aide Testifies She Was Told Trump Lunged At Secret Service And Steering Wheel When Told He Couldn’t Go To Capitol: Cassidy Hutchinson, an aide to former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, testified during a congressional hearing Tuesday that she was told that former President Donald Trump became “irate” when informed by security that he would not be going to the Capitol on January 6, 2021, because the situation was not secure. And she testified that she heard a secondhand account of how Trump was so enraged at his Secret Service detail for blocking him from going to the Capitol that he lunged to the front of his vehicle and tried to turn the wheel. Tony Ornato, then-White House deputy chief of staff, told Hutchinson that Robert Engel, who was the Secret Service agent in charge on January 6, 2021, repeatedly told Trump on their way back to the White House after Trump’s Ellipse speech that it wasn’t safe to go to the Capitol, she said. According to Hutchinson, Ornato recounted Trump screaming, “I’m the f**king President. Take me up to the Capitol now.” Trump then “reached up toward the front of the vehicle to grab at the steering wheel,” Hutchinson remembered learning. She added that, according to Ornato, the former President used his other hand to “lunge” at Engel.
  • NBC: Jan. 6 Panel Warns Of Attempts To ‘influence’ Witnesses By Trump Allies:  Jan. 6 committee members revealed at the close of Tuesday’s hearing that they are concerned that allies of former President Donald Trump are trying to intimidate witnesses who are cooperating with the special House panel. […] Cheney said the panel discovered at least two examples of potential witness intimidation. The first was a phone call that a Jan. 6 witness described receiving and Cheney read a description of: “What they said to me is as long as I continue to be a team player, they know that I’m on the team, I’m doing the right thing, I’m protecting who I need to protect, you know, I’ll continue to stay in good graces in Trump World. “And they have reminded me a couple of times that Trump does read transcripts and just to keep that in mind as I proceeded through my depositions and interviews with the committee.” A second witness, according to Cheney, also received a phone call before his or her deposition: Someone “let me know you have your deposition tomorrow. He wants me to let you know that he’s thinking about you. He knows you’re loyal and you’re going to do the right thing when you go in for your deposition.”

Cassidy Hutchinson’s Testimony Reveals Increased Legal Risks For Trump 

  • Politico: How The Jan. 6 Panel’s Star Witness Drew A Roadmap For Trump’s Culpability: The Jan. 6 select committee made a big bet on Cassidy Hutchinson. She delivered on Tuesday — and then some. With what may prove the most damning testimony about a sitting president’s actions in American history, the former right hand of ex-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows stitched together every element of the panel’s case against Donald Trump. The Capitol riot committee has painted the former president’s potential criminal culpability for his effort to overturn the election in stark hues: investigators have portrayed Trump fuming atop an increasingly conspiracy-addled West Wing and working to corrupt the peaceful transfer of power at any cost. Yet it was their sixth hearing that most clearly cast Trump as a uniquely pernicious force, thanks to a soft-spoken but bell-clear witness. “I was disgusted,” Hutchinson said of Trump’s behavior on Jan. 6, particularly after he tweeted an attack on Mike Pence as the then-vice president was fleeing rioters who’d called for his execution. “It was unpatriotic. It was un-American. We were watching the Capitol building get defaced over a lie.”
  • New York Times: Cassidy Hutchinson’s Testimony Highlights Legal Risks for Trump:  It was one of the most dramatic moments in a presentation filled with them: Just before President Donald J. Trump went onstage near the White House last year and urged his supporters to “fight like hell” and march on the Capitol, an aide testified on Tuesday, he was told that some of them were armed. It was also a potentially consequential moment for any prosecution of Mr. Trump, legal experts said. Knowing that his crowd of supporters had the means to be violent when he exhorted them to march to the Capitol — and declared that he wanted to go with them — could nudge Mr. Trump closer to facing criminal charges, legal experts said. “This really moved the ball significantly, even though there is still a long way to go,” said Renato Mariotti, a legal analyst and former federal prosecutor in Illinois. The extent to which the Justice Department’s expanding criminal inquiry is focused on Mr. Trump remains unclear. But the revelations in the testimony to the House select committee by Cassidy Hutchinson, a former White House aide, both provided new evidence about Mr. Trump’s activities before the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol and chipped away at any potential defense that he was merely expressing well-founded views about election fraud.
  • CNN: ‘This Is A Bombshell’: Trump Aides Left Speechless By Hutchinson Testimony:  Aides to former President Donald Trump were left speechless amid the first half of Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony on Tuesday, acknowledging to CNN that her testimony was “a bombshell” with potentially huge repercussions for Trump. Trump was already bracing for an explosive day of testimony from Hutchinson, who previously told the House select committee that the former President approved of rioters chanting violent threats against Vice President Mike Pence on January 6, 2021. “This is a bombshell. It’s stunning. It’s shocking. The story about ‘The Beast’ — I don’t have words. It’s just stunning,” said one Trump adviser, referring to the presidential limousine. “This paints a picture of Trump completely unhinged and completely losing all control which, for his base, they think of him as someone who is in command at all times. This completely flies in the face of that,” the adviser added. The Trump adviser, who was in a group text chat with several other Trump aides and allies as the hearing played out, said that “no one is taking this lightly.” “For the first time since the hearings started, no one is dismissing this,” the adviser said.
  • Washington Post: In Hutchinson’s Testimony, Experts See ‘Nuggets’ For Justice Probe:  The surprise testimony of former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson to the Jan. 6 committee offered damaging anecdotes about President Donald Trump — including some allegations that legal experts said could factor into the Justice Department’s sprawling criminal investigation of the events before, during and after the Capitol riot. David Laufman, a former senior Justice Department lawyer now in private practice, said Hutchinson’s testimony “contained credible nuggets of information that would support” prosecutors viewing Trump as an investigative target in a seditious conspiracy investigation. Former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti said he thought Hutchinson’s information would more likely support an investigation into whether Trump could be charged with incitement to violence. There was no immediate corroboration for Hutchinson’s descriptions of conversations involving Trump or senior aides and advisers. Trump, in a statement, denied her version of events.

Election Deniers Fail In Colorado Primaries, Rise In Illinois 

  • Washington Post: Election Deniers In Colo. Rejected In Favor Of More Moderate Republicans:  Republican primary voters in Colorado on Tuesday rejected three hard-line election deniers in statewide contests in favor of more moderate opponents — including a U.S. Senate contender who supports some abortion rights. The rebuke of the far-right hopefuls came as House Republicans in more conservative areas across the country prevailed over primary challengers who criticized them for supporting a never-formed independent commission to investigate the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by a pro-Trump mob. And Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.), who had been poised to reject certification of the 2020 election results but switched his vote after the Jan. 6 attack, also advanced from his primary. The results of these closely watched primaries, projected by the Associated Press, marked a collective blow to insurgent challengers pressing their case at a time when the House select committee investigating Jan. 6 is under a national spotlight. Tuesday’s primaries unfolded against the backdrop of an explosive congressional hearing about the insurrection and former president Donald Trump’s conduct that day. 
  • New York Times: Darren Bailey, A Far-Right State Senator, Will Be The Republican Nominee For Illinois Governor:  Darren Bailey, a far-right state senator who was the beneficiary of an extraordinary effort by Democrats to help his candidacy, has won the Republican primary for governor in Illinois. Mr. Bailey, whose crushing victory was called by The Associated Press on Tuesday, topped a field of five other Republicans in the contest to oppose Gov. J.B. Pritzker, a billionaire Democrat who invested $35 million to influence the G.O.P. primary. The Illinois governor’s race is on track to become the most expensive campaign for a nonpresidential office in American history. More than $100 million has been spent on television advertising in the primary. A farmer from Southern Illinois who was endorsed by former President Donald J. Trump at a rally on Saturday, Mr. Bailey was virtually unknown in state politics before he upset a Republican incumbent in a 2018 primary for a State House district. One of his first legislative proposals once in office was a bill to remove Chicago from the state. When the pandemic began, he refused to wear a mask during legislative sessions and sued Mr. Pritzker to block public health mitigation efforts.
  • Politico: Trump-Endorsed Miller Beats Davis In GOP Primary Featuring 2 Illinois Incumbents:  Trump-endorsed Rep. Mary Miller has won the GOP primary for a heavily Republican district against fellow incumbent Rep. Rodney Davis, who conceded the race Tuesday night. Miller was able to galvanize conservative voters by painting Davis as a moderate, citing both former President Donald Trump’s endorsement of her and her vote against certifying the 2020 presidential election results. Miller and Davis ended up vying for the same seat after redistricting, which Illinois Democrats controlled and used to gerrymander the congressional map. The newly formed district skews heavily Republican. The win comes a week after a shocking moment while Miller was speaking at a rally alongside Trump, when she said the Supreme Court ruling on Roe v. Wade was a “historic victory for white life.” A spokesperson later said she meant to say “right to life.”

What’s Next For The Investigations 

  • New York Times: A Lawyer For Virginia Thomas Said She Would Not Testify To The House Panel For Now: A lawyer for Virginia Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and a supporter of President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to stay in power after the 2020 election, told the House select committee investigating the Capitol riot that he saw no reason for her to testify before the panel. The letter from her lawyer, Mark Paoletta, obtained by The New York Times, came after the committee made a fresh request to secure an appearance from Ms. Thomas, who had exchanged text messages with the White House chief of staff at the time, Mark Meadows, in which she urged on efforts to challenge Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory.
  • Politico: Eastman Drops Bid To Block Phone Records From Jan. 6 Committee: John Eastman, an architect of Donald Trump’s last-ditch bid to subvert the 2020 election, has dropped a lawsuit aimed at blocking the Jan. 6 select committee from obtaining his phone records. In a late Tuesday filing, Eastman voluntarily dismissed the suit, claiming that he’d been assured the committee was only seeking his call logs — not the content of any messages held by his carrier, Verizon. The select committee has long contended that it lacks the authority to obtain message content.
  • CNN: Trump Documentary Filmmaker Expected To Cooperate With Fulton County Prosecutor Investigating Former President:  Donald Trump documentary filmmaker Alex Holder has been contacted by the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office about his potential cooperation with the grand jury investigating the pressure the former President put on Georgia officials to overturn that state’s 2020 election results, a source with knowledge of the situation told CNN. Fulton County prosecutor Fani Willis issued a subpoena for Holder’s cooperation as well as the filmmaker’s raw footage, including interviews with Trump, the source said. “Our client will comply with any lawful subpoena from the Department of Justice or any other law enforcement agency,” said Holder’s attorney Russell Smith.

In The States 

ARIZONA: 18 Months After The Election Maricopa County GOP Executive Committee Rejects Results  

  • Arizona Republic: Maricopa County GOP Executive Committee Rejects 2020 Election Results:  Maricopa County’s Republican Party’s executive committee, following in the footsteps of the Texas GOP, passed a resolution that rejects the nationwide 2020 presidential election results. The resolution, adopted June 21 by the county party’s executive committee, cites alleged irregularities by “various secretaries of state” as well as the “2000 Mules” documentary to support its claim that Joe Biden did not win the presidency. It also claims that five states were swung to Biden’s column due to “substantial election fraud in key metropolitan areas” and references the findings of the Arizona Senate’s ballot review of Maricopa County’s election to support its assertion that Biden didn’t win. Brian Ference, who authored the resolution, said in an email that the 2000 Mules documentary “irrefutably proves huge outcome changing levels of fraud in the 2020 election.” The movie, which has been widely debunked, examined the role of ballot drop boxes in the 2020 election, including those in Maricopa County. 

LOUISIANA: Supreme Court Revives Racially Biased Congressional Map For Louisiana 

  • New York Times: Supreme Court Revives Republican-Drawn Voting Map in Louisiana: The Supreme Court on Tuesday reinstated a Republican-drawn congressional map in Louisiana that a federal judge had said diluted the power of Black voters. The court’s three liberal members dissented. The Supreme Court’s brief order, which included no reasoning, blocked the judge’s ruling and granted a petition seeking review in the case. The justices will, the order said, hold the Louisiana case while the court decides a similar one from Alabama in its next term. As a practical matter, the court’s order ensures that congressional elections in Louisiana this fall will proceed under a map fashioned by Republican lawmakers, delivering a setback to Democrats, who face tight races in their bid to retain control of Congress.

What Experts Are Saying

Michael Beschloss, NBC News American presidential historian: “Never in history have we ever heard credible testimony before Congress this shocking against a President of the United States.” Tweet 

Sol Wisenberg, associate and deputy Independent Counsel under Kenneth W. Starr, on whether Donald Trump committed a crime: “This is the smoking gun…There isn’t any question this establishes a prima facie case for his criminal culpability on seditious conspiracy charges.” Tweet from NYT’s Peter Baker 

Neal Katyal, former US Acting Solicitor General: “This testimony is Exhibit A in United States v. Donald Trump. It is measured, credible, and connects the dots.” Tweet 

Donald Ayer, who served as the No. 2 Justice Department official under President George H.W. Bush: “[W]e have people all over the country conspiring to do this again. If he [Donald Trump] just walks away after this behavior, after what he’s done, the message goes out to scoundrels all over America that we’re not really ready to stand up to this. Deterrence is critical to our future in the next few years.” Politico Nightly 

Harry Litman, former US attorney: “Don’t want this to get lost in the avalanche of huge revelations.  This is the first possible link b/t insurrectionists and highest reaches of WH, inc Trump…Holy crap — at Trump’s command, Meadows calls Stone and Flynn the night of 1/5. and Meadows was planning to go to the war room w/ Giuliani et al in Willard that evening. this is the first concrete link going from Trump/Meadows to the insurrectionists. a bridge conspiracy.” Tweets 

Ryan Goodman, former special counsel at Department of Defense: “Crucial testimony. Devastating.👇

18 U.S. Code § 2383: “Whoever incites, sets on foot, assists, or engages in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States.”

Trump says armed supporters can march on Capitol.

Then tells crowd to march, fight like hell.” Tweet 

Steve Vladeck, Charles Alan Wright Chair in Federal Courts at the University of Texas School of Law: “Don’t be distracted by claims of “hearsay.” That goes to whether evidence can be admitted in *court,* not Congress. The key is that Hutchinson testified *under oath.* If she was lying, she faces felony charges. The same can’t be said for those trying to discredit her testimony.” Tweet 

Alan Rozenshtein, professor at University of Minnesota Law School and Lawfare senior editor: “After this hearing, I think the possibility of a criminal indictment of Trump for Jan. 6 has flipped from unlikely to more-likely-than-not.” Tweet 

Norm Eisen, Brookings Institute senior fellow: “Make no mistake, those texts we just saw will certainly lead to criminal investigation & perhaps prosecution under 18 USC 1512, which punishes witness intimidation with fines, imprisonment for not more than 20 years, or both.” Tweet 

Elizabeth Wydra, president of Constitutional Accountability Center: “The testimony today was very damning for, obviously, President Trump, but also Mark Meadows, that they knew that leading up to January 6, it could be violent…this is very damning evidence against President Trump and Mark Meadows. I’m sure that the Department of Justice is paying very close attention to this, and I think the question is going to be, what’s the accountability now?” ABC News Live 

Joyce Vance, former US Attorney: “Jim Jordan should testify about his call with Mark Meadows while the mob was attacking the Capitol” Tweet

Julian Zelizer, American historian at Princeton University: “If these actions are allowed to be acceptable in presidential politics, then we have crossed a dangerous threshold where pretty much anything is acceptable.” Tweet 

Maria J. Stephan, Chief Organizer & Co-lead, The Horizons Project: “The authoritarian threat has not gone away in America. It has metastasized. We seriously need to come together and wage the most powerful anti-authoritarian movement the world has ever seen. Of course we can win but only if we see the problem for what it is. #January6thHearings” Tweet 

What Pundits Are Saying

Charlie Sykes, The Bulwark founder and editor-at-large: “I’m shocked. And I haven’t been shocked by anything from this White House for a very long time. But this… HOLY F**K.” Tweet 

George Conway, Washington Post contributing columnist: “This is the most astonishing testimony I have ever seen or heard or read. You could litigate or investigate for a thousand years and never see anything as mind-blowing as this.” Tweet 

Amanda Carpenter, Bulwark columnist: “Nixon sent some hush money to burglars who broke into Watergate. Trump wanted pardons for armed rioters who broke into the Capitol and attacked a Secret Service agent when he couldn’t personally lead the mob.” Tweet 

David Axelrod, Obama administration senior official: “The references to the foreknowledge of likely violence and Meadows contacts with the Stone-Rudy-Flynn ‘command center’ tightens the connection between the WH and the indicted seditious conspirators. No wonder these guys wanted pardons!” Tweet 

Sarah Longwell, Bulwark publisher: “I know it sounds like what you’re hearing is an indictment of Trump, and it is, but it’s also an indictment of every Republican—in congress and out—who supported and excused this despicable, thoroughly dishonorable man.” Tweet 

Bill Kristol, Bulwark editor-at-large: “Will any senior Republican elected official demonstrate a tiny fraction of the courage of Cassidy Hutchinson, and step forward now to say, simply, that Donald Trump should never again be president?” Tweet 

Sarah Matthews, Trump WH deputy press secretary: “Anyone downplaying Cassidy Hutchinson’s role or her access in the West Wing either doesn’t understand how the Trump WH worked or is attempting to discredit her because they’re scared of how damning this testimony is.” Tweet 

Michael Steele, former RNC chairman: “From Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony remember the #GOP told us they could care less about these hearings. Don’t forget they were the enablers, they said it was “legitimate political discourse”, they bent the knee, they sought pardons, they rebuked @RepLizCheney & @AdamKinzinger” Tweet 

Mick Mulvaney, Trump admin. Office of Mgmt. & Budget director: “My guess is that before this is over, we will be hearing testimony from Ornato, Engle, and Meadows. This is explosive stuff.  If Cassidy is making this up, they will need to say that.  If she isn’t they will have to corroborate. I know her. I don’t think she is lying.” Tweet 

Headlines

The MAGA Movement And The Ongoing Threat To Elections 

Associated Press: Hard-line conservative Reps. Boebert, Miller win primaries

HuffPost: Democratic Meddling Fails To Lift Election Denier In Colorado GOP Senate Race

 

January 6 And The 2020 Election

ABC: Trump White House attorney disputes Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony about handwritten note

Axios: Jan. 6 hearings deliver new template for digital-era dramatics

Axios: Meadows Said Trump Felt Pence “Deserves” To Be Hanged, Former Top Aide Testifies: 

HuffPost: ‘Our Own President Set Us Up’: Injured Capitol Police Officer Says Trump Betrayed Him

New York Times: The Man Helping Drive the Investigation Into Trump’s Push to Keep Power

New York Times: Trump Aides Watch Testimony and Brace for Damage

New York Times (Analysis): A President Untethered

Rolling Stone: Trump Told Meadows to Call Roger Stone and Michael Flynn Day Before Capitol Attack … For Some Strange Reason

Washington Post: Trump sought to lead armed mob to Capitol on Jan. 6, aide says

Washington Post: Cassidy Hutchinson’s path from trusted insider to explosive witness

Washington Post (Analysis): Trump’s had bad moments, but few worse than Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony

 

Opinion 

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (Editorial): Ron Johnson’s denials about Donald Trump’s fake-elector plot don’t add up

Washington Post (Paul Waldman and Greg Sargent): Bombshell hearing raises a question: Why was Trump’s lawyer terrified?

 

Political Violence 

New York Times: Giuliani on Defensive After Uproar Over Assault Claim