Very good opinion article (by Lucian K.
Truscott IV) and the detailed analysis of January 6 – one year later – posted
at Salon.com with this headline (formatted to fit the blog):
“Donald Trump should be very
afraid: This anniversary was not good news for him”
Photo Above: Trump speaks at the “Stop the Steal” Rally on January 6, 2021 in Washington, DC. At the same time, Vice President Mike Pence was ready to preside over a joint session of Congress to certify the count of the Electoral College votes for President in the Capitol.
Photo by Salon / Getty
Donald Trump must have awoken on the morning of January 6
last year with a terrible sense of foreboding. It was the day his nemesis, Joe
Biden, was scheduled to be certified as the winner of the presidential
election. He had spent two whole months, November and December, trying to
forestall what was going to happen that day.
We now know from reporting on the period after the election
that he didn't do anything except play golf and talk to his outside lawyers,
like Rudy Giuliani, and outside advisers, like Steve Bannon, about possible
ways the results of the election could be overturned. He spoke with Bannon
on December 29 from Mar-a-Lago. Bannon told Trump he had to return from Florida
and be present in Washington to prepare the ground for what they had planned for
January 6.
This meant he would have to skip his big annual New Year's
Eve celebration at his club in Palm Springs, no small matter in the world of
Donald Trump, who loves to be surrounded with adoring fans who have paid big
money to be in his presence. But Bannon pushed him and pushed him hard. He had
to work on Mike Pence. He had to pay attention to the memos written by another
of his outside lawyers.
For example Bannon told
Trump to listen to John Eastman, who
was laying out two scenarios in which Pence, presiding over the joint session
of Congress on January 6, could: (1) refuse to certify the electoral votes from
battleground states, and (2) throw the election into the House of
Representatives, where, as one memo delightedly declares, in all caps: “TRUMP WINS.”
Trump had been after Pence to help him overturn the election for weeks. On January 5, for example, Trump cornered Pence in the Oval Office and called Eastman, who was in the “War Room at the Willard Hotel across the street.”
The two of them pressured Pence to refuse to certify enough electoral
ballots from states like AZ, PA, and MI in such a way that neither Trump nor
Biden would achieve the 270 Electoral Votes necessary to win and be declared
President elect.
In that scenario, the
ballots would be returned to the states where only GOP-led legislatures would
convene and appoint a new slate of electors (all for Trump), and, again in all
caps on the memo was: “TRUMP WINS.”
According to Bob Woodward and Robert Costa's book Peril, which uncovered the Eastman memos and provides the bulk of the reporting on what transpired between Trump and Pence, the vice president demurred during that January 5 Oval Office meeting with Trump.
The next morning, Pence spoke to
the conservative retired Judge J. Michael Luttig,
who had been Eastman's boss in the Justice Department, about a letter he would
release later that day. Following the legal advice of Luttig, as well as that
of another conservative lawyer, John Yoo who is also the author
“Torture Memo”, Pence wrote:
“My considered judgement is that my oath to support and defend the Constitution
constrains me from claiming unilateral authority to determine which electoral
votes should be counted and which should not.”
Pence remained at the vice
president's residence in the Naval Observatory on the morning of the 6th and
did not go to the White House.
Trump had begun tweeting veiled threats directed at Pence at 1 a.m. and
continued at 8:17 a.m. with this: “All Mike Pence has to do is send them
back to the States, AND WE WIN. Do it Mike, this is a time for extreme courage!”
But Pence went straight
from his home to the Capitol, leaving Trump in the Oval Office making his final
preparations for the rally on the Ellipse.
Trump advertised that event in a December tweet: “Be there. Will be
wild!”
Woodward and Costa made a valedictory tour of the cable shows on Thursday, appearing on “Morning Joe” and later the same day on “The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell.”
Woodward displayed his own copy of the Eastman
memos on the air and referred several times to another sheaf of papers he
described as a file of research from the office of Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) that
showed no evidence whatsoever of election fraud.
Rep. Liz Cheney
(R-WY) and Select Committee Vice Chair, appeared on CNN, telling Jake Tapper:
“The president of the United States is responsible for ensuring the laws are
faithfully executed; he's responsible for the security of the branches. So
for the president to, either through his action or inaction, for example,
attempt to impede or obstruct the counting of electoral votes, which is an
official function of Congress, the committee is looking at that, whether what
he did constitutes that kind of a crime. But certainly it's dereliction
of duty.”
Cheney has talked about possible crimes committed by Trump on or around January 6 before, but it was Woodward's appearance on MSNBC that really caught my attention. I've been a sort of Woodward tea-leaf reader since the Watergate days, throughout his various tomes on presidents as the years have passed.
What has always amazed me about Woodward has been his almost congenital refusal to draw conclusions from the extensive reporting he's done on presidents and their administrations.
He'll interview them and come up with extraordinary quotes and documentary evidence, but all he ever does is present it without comment.
He has been
called a “stenographer” for good reason, because of his reluctance or outright
refusal to analyze or draw conclusions from some of the groundbreaking
revelations he has reported over the years.
But not this week. Brandishing handfuls of documents and looking as animated as I've ever seen him, Woodward made repeated charges that what Trump had done in attempting to overthrow the election of 2020 was “a crime against the Constitution.”
I'm not going to review my Woodward library on a
quote-hunt, but I'm pretty sure it's the first time I've ever heard him accuse
a president or former president of a crime. I'm dwelling on Woodward's recent
appearances on television for a reason.
Ever since his famous work on Watergate, he has made a point of not reporting anything unless he's confirmed it with multiple sources or has seen it written in a document he has in his possession. For that reason, Woodward has always known a lot more than he has written.
He's not necessarily withholding information from his readers, he is simply meticulous about what he feels he can report as true and what he can't. In his appearances on television, he always seems beyond buttoned-up.
He's clearly a guy who's not just careful about what he says, but obsessively
so. Not on the anniversary of January 6.
Woodward looked like he was about to burst, holding out his sheaves
of documents like they were tablets that had been passed down to him on a
mountain. Woodward is reticent. He is careful. But he also reflects very
accurately what the Washington establishment is thinking and talking about
amongst themselves — the behind the scenes chatter of the “permanent
government.”
Watching him on TV and reading my Bob Woodward tea leaves, it looked to me that he has heard talk from friends and sources amounting to more than rumor — that Trump is going to end up charged with a felony, or multiple felonies.
He made clear that he thinks the House January 6 committee is being thorough, almost to a fault, in the way they're going about their investigation of the events before, during and after the day itself.
Woodward is a Washington Whisperer par excellence. He's been at it for almost 50 years. He is one of the least excitable guys I've ever met.
But on that day as he was being interviewed by Lawrence O'Donnell, he looked
like he was about to levitate out of his chair.
That's why for Donald Trump, January 6 this year was even
worse than January 6 last year. As Richard Nixon discovered, when Bob Woodward
says you're in trouble, you've really got something to worry about.
Related Articles:
· Ex-Trump aide Peter Navarro says “100
House members were ready to carry out election coup”
· Donald Trump may finally face
prosecution in the New Year: But the trauma won't end there
· Former federal prosecutor: “We'll see a tidal wave of criminal charges against Donald Trump”
· Adam Schiff on January 6, Republican lies big and small — and prosecuting Donald Trump
Finally this from Mary Trump and her medical assessment of
her uncle Donald:
My 2 Cents: It is apparent to me and
perhaps to a lot of others including lawyers a lot smarter than me have drawn
the conclusion that had the coup succeeded and Trump got his second term based
on all the evidence of the crimes of the coup it is obviously that if any criminal
complaints were filed, carried out and people indicted that Trump, in his
second term, would gleefully pardon them all of them just as he did for others
loyal to him in other criminal cases.
People Trump pardoned for example like Roger Stone, Steven Bannon, Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, and numerous others like those associated after the Mueller Russia investigation.
That is what crime bosses do: They
protect their own.
Thus the stage was set for
the crime and ways out for those caught who had helped in the coup of January 6
– had it succeed and thank goodness it did not.
Yet, still today, Trump
persists in his criminal ways … the only way to solve this national misery and
shame is to charge Trump with massive crimes, indict him, prosecute him, try
him, find him guilty, and then give him a very, very long prison term.
The best outcome for national unity and a return to sanity is this image in my view:
If not, then Trump will be emboldened to do who knows what? Most certainly a deadlier repeat of January 6, 2021 that would effectively be the end of America that we all say we love and respect and are loyal to… that must never, ever happen.
Enjoy
the full article at Salon.com here.
Thanks for stopping by.
No comments:
Post a Comment