Then-President Donald Trump and his cronies were made fully aware in advance that their sustained campaign to steal the 2020 election could lead to violence on the day the election results were to be certified on Jan. 6, according to House Jan. 6 Committee vice chair Liz Cheney (R-WY).
“They were warned that January 6th could, and likely would, turn violent,”
To which they replied “GREAT!”
…“what will it take to make it go out of control?”
Nixon was a President who became a criminal. Trump is a criminal who became President.
Cheney has been very deliberate and disciplined about what information she puts out, and when. For her to make this statement now looks to this non-lawyer observer like the Select Committee saying “we have enough stuff to prove at least gross negligence now.”
Gross negligence is not a crime, much less a felony.
I didn’t say it was.
Thanks for the clarification, though.
Anything else to add? Or was Liz just shooting the breeze?
I don’t ascribe any great legal significance to her statement. We have long known that people like Don McGahn and Greg Jacob were telling Trump that the Pence Gambit was illegal. And the likelihood of violence was pretty obvious. The MAGA crowd was thirsting for it, and the anti-MAGAs were refusing to take the bait.
That’s a feature for the DFP, not a bug.
Spot on. As someone who was up to my eyeballs in politics on Capitol Hill in the 1970’s, i can say that Nixon was impeached for sins that were mere peccadilloes compared to Trump’s criminal and irresponsible behavior.
His blatant efforts to profit from his position, pervert the course of justice, turn the Department of Justice into his handmaiden, abandon international commitments in favor of Putin’s Russia, and subvert the constitutional order in a seditious conspiracy to overturn a legitimate election are jaw-dropping in their brazenness.
He should be in the dock answering for his crimes. It is a sign if the system’s inability to deal with a criminal in the Oval Office that he is not.
Repeat again and again.
ETA. Is it a fear that it will look like a political prosecution? Is it an awareness that the rethugs will repeat the activity even if there is no evidence, if anyone thinks the impeachment of Clinton wasn’t payback for Nixon you don’t know rethugs. Or is the standard rich and powerful don’t pay for their sins.
My vote is “all the above.”
Yes, but it ties in with previous comments Cheney has made about “dereliction of duty” with Trump failing to call off the mob on 1/6 until it was already over.
She has hinted about looking at some kind of legislation to address this. It seems to me unlikely to cover Presidential actions, but I don’t know where she’s going with this. Anyway, it’s consistent with her other comments.
Also not a crime. And if Cheney is shifting to making a case that Trump was negligent at presidenting, I don’t think that bodes well for the bipartisan nature of the investigation.
I don’t think she’s aiming to make the case that Trump was negligent at presidenting. I think she wants to send his fat ass to prison. I could be mistaken, but that’s why I do not attribute much to these particular comments. Trump being a shitty president is kind of the baseline for this thing, not a grand revelation.
Ah, I see. And I’m sure you’re right about that, especially since I’m not qualified to assess the legal significance of a toothpick.
What I’m also sure about, though, is that there is political significance to her statement, because, well, she’s a Cheney, and I don’t think there’s anything accidental about a public communication like that.
So sure, anyone with half a brain could tell, in the run-up to Jan 6th, that the overheated rhetoric carried a significant risk of violence. But one of the things that has been claimed, specifically regarding the Florida retiree in his contemptible self, is firstly, well gosh, I didn’t know it was going to go off the rails, and secondly, I used the word “peaceful” at one point in my speech. So there.
And since the storehouse of things that That Guy doesn’t know is so vast, now apparently including the term “burner phone” (which, given how much he’s always loved hanging around the Mob, is not a very believable lie even by his loose standards), that’s a stronger defense than most. But if you’re going to say “well how was I to know”, then it’s kind of awkward if the immediate response is “because you were told so, over and over again, and here’s the proof.”
Just as a reminder, I’m talking about the political side, not the court-of-law (which, last time I checked, the Select Committee was not) side here.
So the question occupying me right now is, who was the intended recipient of this (hypothetical) signal? Just ramping up pressure on 45*?
DOJ, the courts, and the House, if I’m reading her right. I did not pay much attention to the committee members’ speeches last night, but what I heard sounded (and looked, hi Ari Melber!) to me like they were making a record of why the criminal referrals for Navarro and Scavino were warranted. They were not closing arguments against Trump.
I thought it might be to head off any “we didn’t know the MAGAs would get violent”-type argument Trump might make in court. Hard to claim ignorance (like with Trump’s burner phone statement), when you have multiple people warning you of potential violence.
Mo Brooks knew.
It’s not aimed at Trump, at least not directly. It’s aimed at Navarro and Scovino, specifically making the case that the committee justifiably needs their testimony and that their refusal warrants a referral to USADC for criminal contempt charges.
Not only was Clinton payback for Nixon, it had the side benefit of inoculating future Republican presidents against impeachment (see e.g., Trump, Donald). It created the impression that impeachment wasn’t really for only high crimes and misdemeanors, but anything political the opposite party didn’t like. The effect was to make impeachment a petty partisan act, no matter which side did it. Thus, Trump.
Sincere question from a non-lawyer. Aren’t there relevant crimes in this context for which prior awareness of criminality is required?
