All eyes will be on Capitol Hill next week for the first hearing of the House Select Committee to investigate the events of January 6th. In a series of nationally televised hearings, the bipartisan committee members will present extensive evidence that details the months leading up to January 6th, the attack on America, that took place that day, and the continuous coverup. It is imperative that Americans tune in to witness the truth.
Here’s what you need to know for the weekend:
Main Points for the Weekend:
1. The January 6 Committee hearings begin next week. On June 9th, 2022 at 8 pm eastern, the January 6th Select Committee will hold its first in a series of public hearings to lay out the truth of the ongoing plot to overturn the will of the people.
-
- Top point to make: The investigation is nonpartisan, comprehensive, and factual – despite how MAGA Republicans may try to spin the hearings. The American people deserve to know the truth about the plot to overturn the election and have those who tried to do so held accountable.
- If you read one thing: NPR, 6/2/22: Jan. 6 panel promises ‘previously unseen material’ in prime-time hearing on June 9. “This will be the first public hearing held by the committee in nearly a year. During the last hearing, in July, four police officers gave graphic accounts of the physical and verbal assaults they endured while protecting the Capitol and the lawmakers who had gathered on Jan. 6, 2021, to count and certify states’ electoral votes from the 2020 election. Over 100 law enforcement officers were injured and several people died after pro-Trump rioters stormed the Capitol to overturn the election results. Altogether, the panel is expected to hold about a half dozen public hearings in June and release a report on its findings in September. Committee members say the hearings will provide a narrative for what led up to the attack, who helped organize and fund some of the outside groups promoting false claims that Joe Biden did not rightfully win the election, and what then President Trump was doing behind the scenes around the time of the violent insurrection.”
2. Trump Republicans are plotting their response to the nonpartisan hearings. MAGA Republicans are doing Trump’s bidding by attempting to discredit the committee by falsely painting them as a partisan attack, all while trying to distance themselves from Trump’s messaging.
-
- Top point to make: Republicans can’t separate themselves from the MAGA wing that has taken over their party while at the same time attacking the January 6 committee as partisan. The fact is, the committee is fair, comprehensive, and nonpartisan, and the investigation is led by career prosecutors from both sides of the aisle.
- If you read one thing: Axios, 6/3/22:Trumpworld plots Jan. 6 counterprogramming blitz. “Former President Trump and his allies, in conjunction with top House GOP leadership and conservative groups, have begun pulling documents and coordinating a behind-the-scenes effort to counterprogram the Jan. 6 committee’s televised hearings this month, Axios has learned. Why it matters: Republicans face a daunting challenge in the coming messaging war. The committee has been building toward this moment for months, hoping to use the blockbuster summer hearings to paint a vivid picture of how close Trump and his supporters came to subverting democracy.”
3. MAGA Republicans are employing a strategy to create an “army” of poll watchers, attorneys, and more to compromise the election results. Tapes and recordings obtained by POLITICO revealed various Republican party staffers and GOP activists’ plan to train frontline poll workers and legal experts to fight voters at the ballot box while they attempt to exercise their right to vote during the 2022 midterm elections and beyond.
-
- Top point to make: Trump and MAGA allies will go to any lengths to change the results of elections, including putting MAGA allies directly at the polls to overturn votes they disagree with.
- If you read one thing: POLITICO, 06/01/2022: ‘It’s going to be an army’: Tapes reveal GOP plan to contest elections. “The plan, as outlined by a Republican National Committee staffer in Michigan, includes utilizing rules designed to provide political balance among poll workers to install party-trained volunteers prepared to challenge voters at Democratic-majority polling places, developing a website to connect those workers to local lawyers and establishing a network of party-friendly district attorneys who could intervene to block vote counts at certain precincts.”
4. Members of Congress subpoenaed by the January 6 committee have not been willing to cooperate with the non-partisan investigation. MAGA members of Congress, including Representative Jim Jordan, continue to ignore subpoenas from the January 6 Committee, restricting the access of information to the committee to conduct their investigation.
-
- Top point to make: No one is above the law, including members of Congress. The American people will see through this blatant attempt to stymie the committee from revealing the truth about the plot to overturn the election.
- If you read one thing: MSNBC, 06/02/2022: Opinion, Steve Benen: Jan. 6 committee tells Jim Jordan what he didn’t want to hear. ”Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, the Republican co-chair of the bipartisan panel, insisted months ago that Jordan’s perspective is of critical significance precisely because he was ‘involved in a number of meetings in the lead-up to what happened on Jan. 6, involved in planning for Jan. 6, certainly for the objections that day.’ He is not, in other words, just a random GOP voice. Jordan has important insights to share, if only he’d follow through on his ‘nothing to hide’ assurances.”
Expert voices
Harry Litman, former U.S. Attorney, and Deputy Assistant Attorney General, on upcoming House January 6 Hearings: “If the Committee has the goods on Republicans actually giving tours to insurrectionists on January 5th, it will be politically stunning. Can McCarthy just fold his arms and say, ‘There’s nothing here, move along as he’s been doing?” OLD GOATS with Jonathan Alter
Norman Ornstein, an emeritus scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, on January 6 Investigations: “It may be that Donald Trump has tried very hard to avoid any direct involvement, but there is going to be evidence coming from some less-cautious players. There will be texts and phone calls from these people to Mark Meadows and possibly Trump. Looking at how explosive the materials Mark Meadows gave over to the committee voluntarily were, imagine what’s in the materials he didn’t give over. This is going to provide more impetus to subpoena some more of those records. Donald Trump talked about burner phones, [but] they’re going to be able to track what calls he was making. My guess is there’s going to be an enormous amount of circumstantial evidence that will show that Trump was talking on a regular basis with the January 6th perpetrators. That’s going to make it much more difficult for Merrick Garland to just say, ‘Well, we don’t want to get into this.’ There’s going to be a lot of pressure on the Justice Department to take this to its logical conclusion.” OLD GOATS with Jonathan Alter
Heather Cox Richardson, professor of history at Boston College, on GOP Leadership and the 1/6 House Select Committee’s Work: “On June 9, the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol will begin six televised hearings to explain to the American people what happened on and around that day. That story is unlikely to reflect well on Republican leadership, who are trying to discredit the committee itself by claiming it is illegitimate. Their wiggling doesn’t look great for those who are supposed to be responsible for writing our laws… If Americans are concerned that the Republicans have gamed the system, the January 6 committee hearings seem unlikely to provide much reassurance.” Letters from an American
Laurence H. Tribe, the Carl M. Loeb University Professor and Professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard University: “Trump is now emailing that Kemp ‘stole’ the GOP primary election in Georgia from Perdue even though Kemp won by a staggering margin of 3 to 1. It’s now clear what Trump means by a stolen election: He means any election whose result he doesn’t like.” Tweet
Norman Eisen, a senior fellow in governance at the Brookings Institution: “The Jan. 6 hearings in the House are going to be very important. The DOJ typically starts at the bottom and works their way up the food chain. They’ve done that with the hundreds of insurrectionists that they’ve charged. We know they’re asking them about the involvement of the White House and other members of the inner circle. There are other signs that are pointing, at the very least, to a DOJ investigation.” Salon
Daniel Hopkins and Hans Noel, political scientists at the University of Pennsylvania and Georgetown University in “Trump and the Shifting Meaning of ‘Conservative’: Using Activists’ Pairwise Comparisons to Measure Politicians’ Perceived Ideologies”: “[S]enators with very conservative voting records were sometimes perceived as less conservative if they did not support Trump. A confirmatory test shows that these trends extended into 2021. Even among activists, perceived ideology appears to be anchored by prominent people as well as policy positions.” Thomas B. Edsall NYT Column
NYT’s Thomas B. Edsall on Hopkins and Noel’s research findings: “In other words, in the minds of these activists conservatism was defined less by a given politician’s stands on issues than by his or her loyalty to Trump.” New York Times
Clark D. Cunningham, a professor of law at Georgia State University: “said that while Trump faces other legal and civil investigations, the one in Georgia is ‘potentially the most significant’ of them all.‘The phone call to Raffensperger certainly seems like the clearest evidence we have of criminal wrongdoing by Trump,’ Cunningham told Newsweek. ‘It’s a recording, he acknowledges that it’s him, it’s his voice. There’s no question of authenticity,’ Cunningham added. ‘It seems to me that it’s very clear evidence of a violation of Georgia law called the criminal solicitation of election fraud.’” Newsweek
Josh Ritter, a former Los Angeles County prosecutor and criminal defense attorney: “also said the Fulton County probe is the ‘closest to a criminal indictment that we’ve seen for the former president’ so far. ‘It’s pretty historically significant, especially given the fact that it’s a state investigation rather than a federal investigation,’ Ritter told Newsweek.” Newsweek
