Recap of the 2nd Day of January 6th Hearings

[ChiGoose]

I watched the second day of the Jan 6th hearings and thought I would put a recap here for people who do not have two hours to watch it. Due to the length, I may not be able to include every statement and witness, but will include the main witnesses and important testimony.

 

When evaluating the testimony, I think it’s important to remember that the witnesses here were sworn in prior to testifying. Which means that if they lie, they expose themselves to perjury charges. I would keep that in mind when comparing it to people on Twitter or podcasts who have no penalty for lying.

 

Also of note: the committee stated that it will release all of the materials from the hearing, though I have not seen it yet. I imagine they will post it to the Committee's website.

 

Link to the hearing.

 

RECAP:

 

Eric Herschmann (former White House Lawyer):

• Never saw any evidence to sustain the Dominion allegations
• The claims were nuts and Rudy Giuliani never proved his allegations

 

Matt Morgan (former Trump Campaign General Counsel):

• Assessed that the stolen election claims were not sufficient to be outcome changing

 

Chris Stirewalt (Former Fox News Politics Editor):

• After the votes were counted, Joe Biden won the election
• In the 40-50 years of absentee ballots, Dems prefer early voting & absentee while GOP prefers election day. This is called the Red Mirage: election day results will start better for GOP and then shift as the absentee and early vote is tallied.
  • We knew this was going to be more pronounced due to the pandemic and problematic because the Trump campaign was clear they wanted to exploit it.
• Fox News partnered with the Associated Press and the University of Chicago to build a better election forecasting device.
  • As votes come in, they compare them to their model and the Arizona tallies matched their forecast exactly
  • Calling Arizona was a unanimous decision by their team and they are proud for getting it right and beating the competition
• As of November 7th (four days after Election Day), there was essentially no chance that Trump could win

 

Jason Miller (Trump Campaign Senior Advisor):

• Team was aware of the red mirage and was discussing it as the results started coming in
• The atmosphere in the room changed when Fox called Arizona
• While Giuliani wanted Trump to declare victory, Miller did not think it was appropriate given the results

 

Bill Stepien (Trump Campaign Manager):

• Told Trump the early numbers would be good but would change during the night (red mirage).
• Tried to convince Trump that mail-in voting was a good thing. They can lock in votes early and not leave it to chance on election day
  • The GOP had an advantage on the grassroots level that would give them an edge on getting the votes in
• Assigned Alex Cannon to look at the Arizona claims: baseless (claims of illegal voters were just people overseas voting legally)

 

Bill Barr (Attorney General):

• Trump claimed fraud without evidence because the results were changing as the night went on. Barr was not concerned as they knew this would happen (red mirage)
• Trump’s claim that the election was stolen was “bull####”
• Barr had his team look into any allegations of fraud they received and determined they were without merit, bogus, and based on misinformation.
• Barr told Trump that the DoJ was looking into the claims but found them to be without merit
• Mark Meadows and Jared Kushner told Barr they were working to turn Trump around
• On Trump’s claims about Detroit: Instead of counting precincts, Detroit brings all of the ballots to a central location for tallying; meaning there would be trucks bringing in ballots from around the city at all hours
  • Also, Trump did better in Detroit than they had expected
• On Dominion claims: idiotic and disturbing. Absolutely zero basis for the allegations
• Trump had a report that he claimed proved he won. Barr read it and found it to be amateurish and lacked supporting evidence for its claims. Barr: “If he really believes this stuff, he’s become detached from reality”
• Barr’s opinion is that the election was not stolen and there was no evidence that it was
• On 2,000 Mules: “In a nutshell, we were unimpressed with it.” The cellphone data was unimpressive. Mentioned that a contractor said their truck alone probably accounted for 6 of the “mules” since their work route took them by a drop box regularly
  • Even if the ballots were harvested, courts would not throw away legitimate votes. They would still open the ballots, do the verification process and tabulate the legal votes
• On Philadelphia claims: Turnout was in line with the rest of PA. Trump actually ran weaker than other GOP candidates on the ballot (behind 2 of the statewide candidates and the congressional delegation). That does not suggest fraud
• On allegations that more people voted absentee in PA than requested ballots: They compared apples to oranges: took the requested absentee ballots for the primary and compared to the absentee votes in the general. When looking at apples to apples, there was no discrepancy

 

Jeffrey Rosen (Acting Attorney General):

• “There were instances where the president would say ‘I heard this, etc.’ and we were in position to say we have looked at that and you’re getting bad information. It’s not correct. It’s been debunked”

 

Derek Lyons (Counselor to the President):

• Campaign told Trump that the claims of fraud were unsubstantiated and could not be the basis for challenging the election

 

Alex Cannon (Trump Campaign Lawyer):

• Told Peter Navarro that the hand recount in Georgia would resolve any issues with the technology or Dominion, and that Chris Krebbs (CISA) had released report that the technology was secure.
  • Navarro told him that he and Krebbs were part of the Deep State working against Trump
• Had brief conversation with Mike Pence in November. Pence asked if he was finding anything with voter fraud. Cannon told him he was not finding anything sufficient to alter the course of the election. Pence thanked him

 

Richard Donoghue (Acting Deputy Attorney General):

• Tried to be clear to Trump that after dozens of investigations and hundreds of interviews, the claims of fraud were not supported by the evidence. The info Trump was getting was false
• There were so many claims of fraud that when you debunked one, Trump would accept it but then ask about another one
• Claim of 68% error rate in Michigan: was actually 0.00063%
• Claim by PA truck driver of shipping ballots: Investigated who loaded and unloaded the truck, no evidence to support claim
• Claims about Georgia suitcase: Talked to the witnesses, there was no suitcase. If you watch the video closely, it’s an official lockbox
• Claims about scanning ballots multiple times: No evidence
• Claims that Native Americans were being paid to vote: No evidence

 

BJ Pak (US Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia):

• Bill Barr asked him to look into a video from State Farm Arena that purported to prove fraud. Pak found the alleged suitcase was an official lockbox
  • There was a mistake where they thought they were done counting for the night, so they sent the election watchers home and packed up. The Secretary of State corrected them and told them to continue counting
• There was no evidence to support the claim of widespread fraud in Georgia
• Pak left his position and was replaced by someone handpicked by Trump. They continued the investigations and found no evidence to support the claims

 

Al Schmidt (City Commissioner of Philadelphia):

• On Claim of 8,000 dead voters: could not find evidence of even 8
• They took every claim seriously, no matter how absurd it appeared
• When Trump tweeted about Schmidt by name, his family received threats that included the names and ages of his family as well as his home address and other personal details

 

Ben Ginsburg (Leading GOP election lawyer for GOP presidential candidates since 2000):

• Normal course of action after an election is to analyze the precinct results to look for abnormalities and send people to ask questions
  • Check with poll workers and observers to see if they found any irregularities (Trump campaign stated they had 50,000 observers)
• The problem for the Trump campaign was that the election was not close. In Arizona, they were down by ~10,000 votes. When Ginsburg argued Bush v Gore, the difference was 537 votes in 2000
  • That kind of gap is not made up in a recount
• The claim that the Trump campaign was not given the opportunity to provide evidence in court was false: about half of the 62 cases, there were discussions on the merits and in no instance did the court find the claim to be real
• There were post-election reviews in the battleground states that found no evidence of fraud

 

Rep. Zoe Lofgren lead most of the hearing and also played video testimony from a staffer on the committee as well as some Trump campaign employees discussing the post-election fundraising. The main takeaways:

• Between Election Day and January 6th, the campaign sent millions of emails to supporters (as many as 25 per day)
• They encouraged supporters to donate to the Election Defense Fund to fight the election results
• Campaign staffers testified that there was no such fund, it was just a marketing gimmick
  • They raised $250 million after the election
  • Most of the money went to the Save America PAC created by Trump, which then disbursed funds to organizations such as a foundation run by Mark Meadows, a policy institute that employed former Trump campaign staff, the Trump Hotel Collection, and the Jan 6th rally.
  • Lofgren stated that the donors deserve to know where their money went

 

 

MY THOUGHTS / TAKEAWAYS:

 

This is a pretty damning takedown of the election steal claims. As far as I can tell, all of the witnesses were Republicans and/or people hired/appointed by Trump, and despite their investigations, they could not find anything to support the claim that the election was stolen. I do not believe that it will change many minds, but having this on the record in sworn testimony (as opposed to people being able to lie about it on other mediums) is helpful.

 

It is hard to swallow claims that all of these people were secretly working against Trump and, in fact, that claim would mean that Trump is utterly incompetent in hiring and appointing people if all of them end up working to bring him down. Also, the idea that they would all be lying under oath is difficult to believe as they would be in legal jeopardy should someone provide evidence that they are lying.

 

For those hoping for an indictment of Trump himself, the testimony underscores the biggest challenge with a charge like seditious conspiracy: proving mens rea (intent). There was not some smoking gun document or testimony from Trump himself stating that he knew the claims of fraud were baseless but he was pushing them anyway. As unbelievable as the claims were, and with his advisors telling him they were false, if Trump truly believed the election was stolen, that would be a significant challenge for potential prosecutors. Were there to ever be a trial, the prosecution could put on evidence like the testimony from this hearing to convince a jury that Trump was willfully ignorant of the facts (which would satisfy the mens rea requirement), but that is obviously very risky.

 

However, I would like to see more about the post-election fundraising in future hearings. I am not as familiar with the nuances of the law around wire fraud, but if the campaign was soliciting donations for legal expenses and instead funneling the money elsewhere, that would likely result in a lot of potential legal exposure for those involved.

[Irv]

"Hearings"  That's funny.

[BillsFanNC]

[Big Blitz]

Thanks Covidiots:

 

 

 

 

The March 2020 Insurrection 

[SoCal Deek]

Do you know ANYTHING about the American judicial system? Yes…most times when the defense doesn’t put on a defense, and isn’t allowed to question witnesses, and where the prosecution is allowed to splice together deposition segments…it makes the defendant look pretty ridiculous and generally pretty guilty. Luckily that’s NOT the system we have. Now it doesn’t always mean that the defense’s case would convince/sway the jury….but for heaven’s sake…calm down.

[BillsFanNC]

The title of this thread....18 months plus later tells the whole tale.

 

 

Lol.

[Beach]

this seems to be about the election in November and not about the events of J6.  

[ChiGoose]

15 minutes ago, SoCal Deek said:

Do you know ANYTHING about the American judicial system? Yes…most times when the defense doesn’t put on a defense, and isn’t allowed to question witnesses, and where the prosecution is allowed to splice together deposition segments…it makes the defendant look pretty ridiculous and generally pretty guilty. Luckily that’s NOT the system we have. Now it doesn’t always mean that the defense’s case would convince/sway the jury….but for heaven’s sake…calm down.

For maybe the hundredth time, this is not a judicial proceeding. There is no prosecution and there is no defense. It is a congressional fact-finding committee. 

 

I honestly don’t know why this is so difficult for people to grasp.

[BillsFanNC]

51 minutes ago, SoCal Deek said:

Do you know ANYTHING about the American judicial system? Yes…most times when the defense doesn’t put on a defense, and isn’t allowed to question witnesses, and where the prosecution is allowed to splice together deposition segments…it makes the defendant look pretty ridiculous and generally pretty guilty. Luckily that’s NOT the system we have. Now it doesn’t always mean that the defense’s case would convince/sway the jury….but for heaven’s sake…calm down.

 

Stop being about jurisprudence and start being about...

 

Insurrection!!!!!

[716er]

Responses to this thread are absolutely embarrassing. Zero serious discourse. 
 

Trump has mindfukked so many. 

[Orlando Buffalo]

37 minutes ago, ChiGoose said:

For maybe the hundredth time, this is not a judicial proceeding. There is no prosecution and there is no defense. It is a congressional fact-finding committee. 

 

I honestly don’t know why this is so difficult for people to grasp.

You don't even believe what you write, because when you wrote previously what they should be looking into 80% is not being addressed. The only thing that is being addressed is the political aspect.

[716er]

3 minutes ago, Buffalo Timmy said:

You don't even believe what you write, because when you wrote previously what they should be looking into 80% is not being addressed. The only thing that is being addressed is the political aspect.

The political aspect is material to the insurrection. The buy-in to The Big Lie is the catalyst for everything.

[Doc]

6 minutes ago, 716er said:

Responses to this thread are absolutely embarrassing. Zero serious discourse. 
 

Trump has mindfukked so many. 

 

Ain't that the truth.  Just not in the way you believe.

[LeGOATski]

Thanks for the summary.

 

So many posters in here are offended by straight up testimony from people who were actually there and directly involved.

 

Isn't this the testimony you should want to hear? Straight from the horse's mouth, not from some social media warrior.

[Orlando Buffalo]

1 minute ago, 716er said:

The political aspect is material to the insurrection. The buy-in to The Big Lie is the catalyst for everything.

Yes- you got it- it would also be more intelligent to know the reasons for the lack of preparation for a known protest. But Dems only look at things politically so they usually miss the way to improve things.

[716er]

Just now, Buffalo Timmy said:

Yes- you got it- it would also be more intelligent to know the reasons for the lack of preparation for a known protest. But Dems only look at things politically so they usually miss the way to improve things.

Objectively, what is the more important aspect to consider?

 

An attempted political coup 

 

Preparation for a known protest 

[Orlando Buffalo]

5 minutes ago, LeGOATski said:

Thanks for the summary.

 

So many posters in here are offended by straight up testimony from people who were actually there and directly involved.

 

Isn't this the testimony you should want to hear? Straight from the horse's mouth, not from some social media warrior.

What did you learn today? Nothing written here is new at all. As I stated it is 100% political and all a rehash of know info. 

[LeGOATski]

7 minutes ago, Buffalo Timmy said:

What did you learn today? Nothing written here is new at all. As I stated it is 100% political and all a rehash of know info. 

We like to hear it directly from the source, don't we? Why whine so much about it?

[Orlando Buffalo]

4 minutes ago, LeGOATski said:

We like to hear it directly from the source, don't we? Why whine so much about it?

So you learned nothing, thank you for admitting that.

17 minutes ago, 716er said:

Objectively, what is the more important aspect to consider?

 

An attempted political coup 

 

Preparation for a known protest 

Attempted political coup? You are funny dude.

[ChiGoose]

27 minutes ago, Buffalo Timmy said:

What did you learn today? Nothing written here is new at all. As I stated it is 100% political and all a rehash of know info. 

Well, we now have sworn testimony from Trump’s inner circle that he lost the election, it wasn’t stolen and all of the theories being thrown out on PPP everyday are baseless conspiracies.

 

That counts for something.