Somebody had to do it! Jan. 6 committee wraps with a bang -- and a subpoena for Donald Trump

[marmar]

Somebody had to do it! Jan. 6 committee wraps with a bang — and a subpoena for Donald Trump
Laying out an irrefutable case that Trump planned it all, committee answers its own call to hold him accountable

By AMANDA MARCOTTE
Senior Writer
PUBLISHED OCTOBER 13, 2022 5:38PM (EDT)


(Salon) "Our nation cannot only punish the foot soldiers who stormed our Capitol. Those who planned to overturn our election, and brought us to the point of violence, must also be accountable."

In her opening statement of the final hearing of the last House Jan. 6 committee before the midterms — and perhaps the last one, period — Rep. Liz Cheney, the no-longer-exactly-Republican congresswoman from Wyoming, laid out the stakes. Donald Trump was "the central cause of Jan. 6," she said, not just the inspiration.

Over the next couple of hours, the committee carefully painted a picture of Trump as a conductor who brought many different forces together and forged an insurrection. Yes, various other people — longtime Trump lackeys and loyalists like Roger Stone and Steve Bannon — evidently act as go-betweens, translating Trump's desires for an insurrection to the extremely online right-wing goons he needed to actually do the thing. But from beginning to end, this was Trump's plan: To declare the election rigged or stolen, even before votes were cast or counted, and to use those bogus accusations as excuses for his judicial appointees to steal it for him. When that wouldn't work, he turned to Republican all over the country, trying to badger or coerce them into falsifying or invalidating the election results.

That didn't work either, so Trump moved on to his biggest and most audacious plan: Unleash a violent mob on the Capitol, and quite likely show up in person to claim the crown. He was unable to break through the security bureaucracy (and, very likely, his own cowardice) enough to actually get that done. But new evidence introduced on Thursday demonstrated that Trump's vision involved him actually standing at the head of his violent MAGA army, in a cosplay update of Benito Mussolini's March on Rome.

....(snip)....

This hearing offered another riveting spectacle, along with an overwhelming amount of evidence that Donald J. Trump is guilty as charged. The committee did their best to keep things crisp and organized, using both what they identified as Trump's "seven point plan" to overthrow the election and a straightforward timeline. Two arguments stood out as those likeliest to sway timid centrists and normies who remain unwilling to accept that this really did happen in the US of A. First, the committee made the case for extensive premeditation: Trump and others plotted for months to steal the election, well before it happened. Second, the committee provided even more evidence that Trump envisioned himself as the leader and figurehead of the mob he had incited. ..........(more)

https://www.salon.com/2022/10/13/somebody-had-to-do-it-jan-6-committee-wraps-with-a-bang--and-a-subpoena-for-donald/