How Hutchinson Converted Skeptics To Thinking Trump Might Be Prosecuted After All - TPM – Talking Points Memo

@txlawyer Thanks again for sorting out these things for those of us who aren’t lawyers and pointing us in the right direction to know more.

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I suspect, and txlawyer may correct, that Garland wants to do basically one (1) case, with all the many, many charges and a boatload of evidence for each. You get one chance to take down the king, and like the game of thrones, you either win or you die.

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Hard disagree.

It’s not his job to persuade you “personally”. Or me. His job is to charge with high odds of conviction.

I think he’s going to succeed.

It’s a cult. As I’ve said elsewhere on these boards, cults tend to end in only 2 ways:

(1) forced reprogramming, conducted by professionals (usually, families hiring same);

(2) mass death.

Trump-stoked Covid skepticism leans toward (2).

Two British film makers, TBE.

Good one:

AD7F83DF-5B3F-4D6E-B7D8-C55FB8526ED0

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It was a great hearing yesterday. It opened a new front in the prosecution of Trump because it firmly connected him and Meadows to organizing and coordinating the Capitol Riot. Trump had Meadows communicate with and participate in meetings with Stone and those who recruited the Proud Boys et al. Trump pushed for changes at the Ellipse to make it easier for armed folks to enter the crowd. Trump knew why they had guns. He wanted the insurrection to succeed and hoped to lead it. The only reason he didn’t was because the Secret Service defied a direct order and moved him back to the WH. At the WH he confirmed, through Meadows, that he wanted Mike Pence to be murdered and he refused for hours to do anything to stop the insurrection because he wanted it to succeed and needed it to succeed to achieve his end to overturn the election results and complete the coup.

Great testimony and I do appreciate Liz Cheney sticking it to Trump and the Secret Service about the Limo incident. Everyone knows the SS is covering for Trump and that Pence reasonably believed that had he gone with them that they would’ve driven him to the mob or to an undisclosed location to get whacked. Cheney caught them in a moment of shock and candor at the WH just after the Capitol Riot had begun. Hutchinson had noted the conversation in detail and I suspect Cheney and the Committee have additional emails and text messages which describe immediate, shocked reactions as to Trump’s actions and behavior at the ellipse and back at the WH. Cheney is flushing the SS out.

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Hard to believe they’d kill him. Then again, I’m rarely shocked by the MAGAs anymore.

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They do seem to live up to their initials.

Doubt as well. They just needed him unavailable until Grassley could complete the new count.

Bunker in WV would’ve done the trick just fine, “for security reasons”.

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Well it’s not Garland’s thinking that matters here. Garland is not leading the investigation or any prosecution. It’s being run day-to-day by USADC and the FBI, with reporting up the chain to the Criminal Division and from the CD to Deputy AG Lisa Monaco. If and when there are indictments ready to go against Fat Donnie Two Impeachments or any of his high-level cronies, Garland will most likely be informed a short time ahead, to which his response will be something along the lines of “Very well, keep me informed.”

What the prosecutors will want is to bring all applicable charges related to J6 in one big case, probably including both the fake electors fraud and the obstruction by MAGA mob. They will not want to throw in unrelated wire fraud in the same case, and it would undoubtedly get severed out if they tried.

And don’t think that wire fraud is an easy case to assemble.

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I think you forgot two very important parts of the scenario:

  1. Pence, Pelosi, Schumer, AOC and various other politicians murdered.
  2. The boxes containing the electoral votes seized and destroyed.
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Also, and please correct me if I’m wrong, but my understanding of the discovery process and something so interconnected as this is that they’re not likely to move against any of the big guns until they’re ready to launch on all of them, as discovery is highly likely to tip off any uncharged people in the same plot as to what dirt the prosecutors have on them.

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  1. Assume coup cannot fail.
  2. Goto 1.
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It’s all very “One Stupid Day in January.”

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As for what Garland does with all of this info, I hope he has people who are skilled at MS Project. He needs to have a project plan in place with a timeline. He has to charge Trump before Trump declares another run for the Presidency and preferably no later than May 2023. I would like to see charges before the midterms. That’s the timetable Garland has to have in mind. This is no ordinary legal case. Speed does matter here because there is an imperative to defend the Republic.

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“How Hutchinson Converted Skeptics To Thinking Trump Might Be Prosecuted After All.”

Just wait’ll we get to “Chapter 7: The Willard Hotel” !

#RogerStoneWon’tGetPardonedThisTime

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Which brings me back to a part of my original point…all the evidence that Congress has gathered? That we’ve been seeing in these hearings?

Why does the DOJ need to ask Congress for it? Why haven’t they gathered it themselves?

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/jan-6-committee-members-push-back-against-doj-request-for-all-interview-records

Schiff asks some very good questions here. Why does the DOJ need to ask Congress for this stuff? And, as another TPM front page once noted, asking for EVERYTHING the Jan 6th committee has is so overly broad of a request that it seems to be asking to be pushed back on.

Prosecutors, Schiff added, have subpoena power too, and can convene grand juries and bring in witnesses.

You can’t “charge with high odds of conviction” if you aren’t doing the ground work in advance. So why has the committee been able to gather all of the information we’re seeing in these live hearings but the DOJ needs the committee to hand it over?

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I don’t think murder specifically was on the cards. If it happened, they wouldn’t be too upset about it, but more important was to kidnap at least 5 House members to take the majority.

They’d have been spirited through the tunnels to the office buildings, conveniently in a near-empty zone of the city following the bombs discovered nearby at the DNC/RNC, where the QRF from VA with the van and the gunz would pick all the kiddies up and their guests, spirited off to an undisclosed location for long enough that the ballot counting would go ahead, but this time with R majorities in both the House and Senate.

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Nothing says they haven’t. But if someone’s talked to both them and Congress in sworn depositions, they’d really like to get their hands on that to compare and contrast, see whether the person is consistent or has lied to one or the other.

Especially for the cases where they’re using turncoats as witnesses against other folks. Unhelpful if that person ends up having contradicted themselves in two sets of sworn testimony.

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They’re all drinking the ketchup!

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That was most likely the plan. But sometimes it’s hard to control the monster you have created and said monster gets a little worked up and stabs some people.

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That can be somewhat controlled for via protective orders, so prosecutors might bring an indictment against someone like Meadows as a maximalist incentive to become a cooperator. But they are not going to make a move like that unless and until they have exhausted all other pathways to Trump and come up short in the attempt. Really though, as long as they’re continuing to make progress in the investigation, they’re going to keep working on it and hold of the big indictments until they’re done or when something (e.g., the 2024 presidential election) forces their hand.

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Trump should’ve bought me when he had the chance. Just a few tens of millions and he’d be happily chomping down on a well-burnt steak in the West Wing right now.

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