Former President Donald Trump, his political allies, and supporters will have no problem when Vice President Kamala Harris declares Oprah Winfrey and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to be America's new president and vice president following the 2024 election, according to the committee's latest hearing on Jan. 6.After all, what's fair is fair, right? There's no way Trump would say that the legal argument he accepted after (significantly) losing the 2020 election — that then-Vice President Mike Pence had legal authority to overturn the election and declare Trump the winner – is invented rubbish. That would be incredibly hypocritical, and Trump has never been hypocritical in my experience.
Members and witnesses testified on the legal basis that underpins the former president's belief that the election could have been overturned if it hadn't been for Pence's cowardice during a House select committee hearing on the 2021 attack on the US Capitol on Thursday.The following is my summary of the lengthy testimony and extensive evidence: A lawyer named John Eastman devised a legal theory that sounded like it had been scribbled by a group of especially dim-witted hens with pens tethered to their feet.
In your inbox, you'll find the following opinions: Every day, you'll have exclusive access to our columnists and the best of our essays.
Trump and his Faberge-fragile ego believed it because it meant he would either win or have Pence as his fall guy. After every lawyer with a brain that isn't pudding claimed the whole hypothesis was nonsense and thousands of Trump's naïve supporters rushed the U.S. Capitol to try to find Pence and impolitely hang him, the former president never stopped talking about it.Pence's former legal adviser Greg Jacob said that he questioned Eastman if the legal theory he established would hold up to scrutiny by the United States Supreme Court to clarify how confident he was in it. Eastman ultimately conceded that it was going to lose 9-0."I've concluded that I should be on the pardon list, assuming it is still in the works," Eastman wrote to Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani in an email sent after that on Jan. 6, according to the committee.
The 6th of January was a disaster, but conservatives have good cause to be skeptical of these hearings.
Former aide to Vice President Mike Pence: I saw Trump as a tremendous bully. After that, rioters demanded that my boss be hanged.
"You know, on second thinking, I think I'd like a pardon, thank you very much!" says someone who is extremely confident in a contentious legal opinion.
"The president belongs to the American people and the American people alone," Pence declared in a speech earlier this year. And, to be honest, no thought is more un-American than the notion that anyone can elect the president of the United States."
Trump, on the other hand, was clearly opposed.Coups are amusing.
When Pence replied in an Oval Office meeting that he didn't have the power to overturn the election, Trump said, "But wouldn't it almost be cool to have that power?" according to reporting in The Washington Post's Bob Woodward and Robert Costa's book "Peril" – information highlighted in Thursday's hearing.
Sure! That would, I suppose, be as cool as the dickens. Especially if you were Al Gore, the former Vice President of the United States, in January 2001. Or, as I suggested previously, if you're Vice President Harris in January 2025 and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis or Donald Trump Jr. or Marjorie Taylor Greene's body with Trump's head attached wins the presidential
election, you just make Oprah/Ocasio-Cortez the winning pair and hand them the keys to the country.Anyone who believed – despite all evidence – that Trump was correct in pressuring Pence to put democracy in the trash would be happy to surrender to Oprah and AOC's 1,000-year reign. (I'm assuming Oprah and Ocasio-Cortez have access to a life-extension serum.) She's always one step ahead of the game!)
The Eastman/Trump campaign to overturn the election was, at best, "constitutional mischief," according to committee witness and retired Judge Michael Luttig, a respected figure in conservative circles.Perhaps a revolution isn't so horrible after all?
He also stated that the "declaration of Donald Trump as the next president would have thrown America into what I believe would have been tantamount to a revolution within a constitutional crisis in America, which in my opinion, and I'm only one man, would have been the first constitutional crisis since the republic's founding."
Okay, that's alright. However, as the former president stated, it would be extremely cool. And if Pence naming Trump president was cool, then Harris naming Oprah president must be cool as well, based on the transitive property. (I'm not sure how the transitive property works exactly.) Eastman took my thinking hens, and I still haven't received them.)
Anyway, the committee presented evidence and testimony on Thursday from Republicans in and around the Trump administration that Trump and Eastman both knew the plot was illegal, both pushed forward with it anyway, and both pressured the vice president to break the law in order to make Trump look like a loser.
Even though Pence repeatedly stated that he would not participate in the bizarre coup, Trump dictated a statement declaring, "The vice president and I are in great agreement that the vice president has the right to act," according to testimony from former Trump campaign senior adviser Jason Miller.
It's both legal and cool.
Rex Huppke's work can be found here.
Trump's people understood election fraud charges were 'absolutely insane,' so they didn't speak up. Despite this, they remained silent.
The attack on our democracy on January 6 was as follows: A man's plot to assassinate Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh was also foiled.
"We were astonished and upset because whoever had written and put that statement out, it was clearly wrong," former legal counsel Jacob testified Thursday.
"Today, over two years after that terrible day in January 2021, that nonetheless, Donald Trump and his allies and followers constitute a clear and present danger to American democracy," Luttig, whom both Eastman and Republican Sen. Ted Cruz clerked for when he was a judge, said.
Correct. But don't be concerned. President Oprah will gravely safeguard our country. A NEW CAR WILL BE GIVEN TO EVERYONE!!
[zombify_post]
0 Comments