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

[emiliano4]

.Schiff, an affable fellow in most cases, sounded quite comfortable speaking with O’Donnell. He does not seem to be perturbed with the J6 Committee in general, those he is working with or those he is endeavoring to inform.

[darrtown]

@txlawyer

“Those three sentences give you mens rea,” he added — the legal term for when a person has knowledge that they’re doing something that violates the law.

Nope. Mens rea is just the state of mind necessary to form criminal intent. Trump did not have to know that he was doing a crime by inciting the mob to go do violence. He just had to have intended to incite the mob to go do violence.

I was gonna ask what your take was on this so thanks for your take on Mens Rea… I think he very much intended that there be violence. That is what his words say to me… But I think he didn’t care if what he did was criminal or not as I think he thought he was beyond any chance of criminality due to the DoJ “immunity memo” and “cuz the 2nd amendment sez I can do whatever I want”. trump was trying to seize power any way he could think of.

[christianhankel]

@castor_troy

well-burnt steak*

*doused with ketchup

[califdemdreamer]

@dr_coyote

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

After tRump is dead and buried and MAGA is no more, I wonder if there has been any thought for funding for something along the lines of cult deprogramming? Like you say they resemble a cult more than anything. It just so happens that this cult has been weaponized politically. MAGA can’t be politely debated, they need treatment by trained professionals.

[nocoolnamejim]

If we presume that to be the case, then they should have a better idea of what specifically they’re asking for then shouldn’t they? Hence, the point about how overly broad the request is.

Publicly available evidence that the DOJ is preparing to prosecute anyone other than the street level rioters is pretty thin…closing in on two years after the fact.

In theory, sure, we can just take it on faith that these prosecutions are coming. But it sure seems like it has been the Jan 6th committee pushing things along and the DOJ dragging its feet. We finally started seeing, for example, the FBI seizing Eastman’s phone as a result of the committee’s work. From TPM’s own reporting…

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/subpoenas-raids-and-the-jan-6-hearing-5

In case you missed it, David Kurtz and Josh Kovensky just hosted a Twitter Space, discussing everything that went down earlier this week: the feds’ raids, the subpoenas and federal agents’ contact with eleven people involved in Trump’s attempt to subvert the 2020 election.

All of this stuff started moving and happening AFTER the committee started having their hearings. The Feds couldn’t have done any of this before the committee started having their public hearings?

[counterlife]

@tsp

I wonder how it would feel to be Cassidy Hutchinson, and have your testimony be the straw that broke Thump’s defense to put him in prison.

I expect she is contemplating the rest of her life in witness protection. I know I would be.

[sydneyp22]

@brewhousebob

The Dersh wants one more fling with Ghislaine before she does it.

and another after…

[danny]

It’s not the mind that is changing, it’s the thought stream. The mind is the mind.

[irasdad]

@danny

It’s not the mind that is changing, it’s the thought stream.

Or maybe the edibles just kicked in.

[sydneyp22]

@txlawyer

Also, inciting the riot is a felony, but only a 5-year max.

I hope that a 5-year sentence would be a life sentence for the disgusting orange blob

[geographyjones]

Just like the gypsy lady said!!

[ncsteve]

It’s not about changing the minds of committed partisan voters. Nothing in electoral politics is ever about the minds of changing committed partisan voters. By definition, those are the voters whose minds cannot be changed. Especially Republicans.

All other things being equal, elections in this country are decided by the numbnut 5-10% of the electorate who think the president controls the price of gas. They pay little attention because they “hate politics” so trying to break through the haze that surrounds their brains takes something big. And right now, the polling is showing that Dobbs and these hearings are having that effect.

[castor_troy]

@nocoolnamejim

closing in on two years after the fact.

18 months. And only 15 months since Garland was confirmed. And with the massive numbers of people being charged, DOJ had to beef up staffing, that’s a month’s long process in and of itself. Heck, they’ve requested yet another 100 lawyers for next year to deal with all these cases coming through.

Let alone that DOJ has quite the portfolio. Contrary to Hive conventional wisdom, J6 is not the only crime that’s happened in the last 1 1/2 years, and DOJ is actually responsible for prosecuting more than just J6 folks.

Complex white collar crimes can take years to put together in the best of times. Someone dumb enough to whack a police officer over the head with a fire extinguisher on camera is far easier to prosecute, that’s why those have been going first. Easiest to put together.

[dr_coyote]

@castor_troy

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”.

Precisely. I think Pence suspected exactly this–because he’d been hearing these couping conversations–and knew that, even if he went involuntarily (or “the car turned left when it should have turned right”), he’d potentially be exposed to conspiracy charges. He’s a coward but he’s not stupid.

@irasdad

#RogerStoneWon’tGetPardonedThisTime

I think that Giuliani and Stone will flip. Hell, Flynn too. Gordon Liddy was a psycho but Flynn is no Gordon Liddy: he will not volunteer to “be on whatever corner you order” in order to be whacked.

I think that’s another reason for the rigid silence from DOJ: they want all of those seditious bastards all terrified that somebody else in the top level of capos is cutting a deal by underbussing their co-conspirators.

@califdemdreamer

I wonder if there has been any thought for funding for something along the lines of cult deprogramming?

The closest analogy I can think of is Desmond Tutu’s Truth & Reconciliation commission in post-apartheid South Africa. Even that didn’t prevent the post-apartheid corruption from erupting again. But it did ramp-down the worst of the ethnic hatreds.

@nocoolnamejim

it sure seems like

Hence, inadmissible.

[castor_troy]

Keep telling folks, it all happened right in front of us and rather public. Only thing now is getting the official confirmation as it plays out.

[noonm]

@txlawyer

And since Donnie wasn’t so unfocused as to have reduced a criminal fuckin’ conspiracy to writing

What if he wrote it in ketchup?

More seriously, what are the odds that the criminal conspiracy is on the Holder documentary raw footage? I think we were expecting the Holder tapes to be included in the last hearing. The fact that they weren’t suggests to me that their may be damning information on video the committee didn’t want to disclose yet.

[ralph_vonholst]

Gov. Inslee weighs in.

()

[castor_troy]

@dr_coyote

I think that’s another reason for the rigid silence from DOJ: they want all of those seditious bastards all terrified that somebody else in the top level of capos is cutting a deal by underbussing their co-conspirators.

Top suspect as the snitch: DJT.

[geographyjones]

Hey…ain’t dissin’ that POV…me an’ the gypsy lady gotta thang…

[emiliano4]

The American people are industrious and quite productive, innovative and satisfied when presented with specific tasks. That’s all of them, from every segment.

The travesty of our fight against climate change is the misdirection of large groups of our population against constructive activities in a unified, organized fashion.

The lessons of WWII are not even talked about…

Another political system could have had these same people attacking the tasks we need to work on, instead of each other.