They released it within the last hour, and I haven’t had a chance to read it yet, but for right now, you simply must see the chapter titles. They’re positively Biblical.
Years ago l wrote a play in grad school which cost me my masters degree. The play was a rabid, morality play about the last days of Nixon called: Loyalty, Unexpurgated.
How was l to know my advisor was outraged! He quietly sunk my ship. It’s been the greatest impetus for my writing output!
The irony of his demise is too delicious to relate. Let’s just say that Karma’s a bitch!
And now Nixon is being canonized because he’s not Trump.
This is the best Christmas present I’ve ever had, finally the truth is going to have it’s day, I know that they will try to blur it’s clarity but this is going to be part of the record for that POS, that will forever taint any clear eyed look at what he did, if he had had a brain, we would be in way more trouble than we are now. If I could, I would personally thank everyone on the committee and all who worked for them, they have done a great service to our nation and deserve all of our gratitude 🙏.
824 pages of testimony gathered over almost 2 years of another day that will live in infamy and yet even now played down by Republicans as a little more than a normal tourist day., yet one where serious injuries and deaths occurred. Well lets see how many of these tourists and tourist guides wind up behind bars.
Love it! Love the section titles. tfg and GOP must be fuming the Select Committee completed their work before they could be shut down by the new congress.
I spent the evening watching MSNBC, and listening to the talking heads ruminate, parse, and opine on whether Donald J Trump, and which of his assorted minions, can be indicted for conducting an insurrection, and all of their lesser included offenses, with a good expectation that they, and each of them, will duly and inevitably be convicted of those crimes.
The former prosecutors and Justice Department lawyers I watched and listened to make eminent good sense. That 845-page door stopper of a history contains some of the most detailed, vetted, and source-cited evidence of crime that one could imagine. On previous occasions, I've noted on these pages that the prosecutors are going to need to nail down the trial testimonies of all those that they intend to call as witnesses against Donald J. Trump, and five of his chief associates mentioned in the House January 6 committee report: Kenneth Chesebro, Rudolph Giuliani, Jeffrey Clark, and Mark Meadows. On the other hand, the talking heads from the Washington press corps have a tendency to overthink the quantum of proof that is necessary to convict someone of a serious felony. As a public service, I would suggest to them that instead of talking to each other, they access the Department of Justice website, and do their own legal research, by downloading the Justice Department's United States Attorneys' Manual, and then turned to Title IX and began looking at the substantive requirements for prosecuting the specific crimes in question, specifically the elements of the crime laid out in the manual, and then maybe, looking at some of the decided cases that apply those criminal elements to the case is at hand. It's not rocket science.
Some of these worthies undoubtedly went to law school at some point earlier in their careers, that's like sitting in the front row of a boxing match and scoring the hits and misses. It is understood that the house report was assembled and published without the input of Trump Republicans and their allies in the press. It's understood that they would disagree with everything the house committee said about the January 6 insurrection and the events leading up to it. But facts are facts. And the committee is relying on the sworn testimony of its witnesses, as vetted by staff attorneys, and how the individual elements of the various testimonies interleave and interlock with the testimony of other witnesses who did not have the opportunity to coordinate their testimonies with those of the principal witnesses. It is understood that witnesses to the same events may remember things differently from one another, depending upon their respective involvements and perspectives; but generally speaking, there is a penumbra, a Venn diagram, about which the witnesses are likely to agree. Absolute certainty is not required nor expected. What is required is a good faith effort to recollect events recorded, and to truthfully relate what was seen, heard, or experienced. People draw conclusions based upon events that they've seen and experienced. When an individual is described as telling people that the former president was thrilled at what he was seeing on television, or words to that effect, most people hearing such testimony would understand that the inference that the reporting witness was describing was a logical inference from what he had been witnessing over an extended period of time. No one is going to be able to deconstruct what they saw down to its granular elements, whether vocal, or in terms of body language. Everything merges together.
When people talk about parsing evidence there is a tendency to engage in something akin to the ancient philosophical riddle or conundrum known as Zeno's Paradox. That is the idea advanced by Greek philosopher Zeno of Elea in which an archer shoots an arrow from Point A toward Point B, but then he divides that distance of the arrow's flight into an infinitely subdivided set as a convergent series, in which the arrow never really reaches its target because it is always getting halfway there within each segment of the series down to nothingness. Philosophers have called this a logical paradox, but in reality, it is simply verbal legerdemain. The only thing that changes is the distance at which the arrow flies within each demarked segment traverses within its overall flight, with distance being the variable; but at some point, the arrow will hit its mark, regardless of philosophical objections. It is also a perfect example of overthinking a problem. Regardless of each of several events leading up to an intended outcome, the intended outcome remains the same. Whatever was done to achieve that outcome continues unabated, regardless of whether that intended outcome is actually achieved. The fact that Donald Trump's premeditated plan was the central organizing principle around which Trump's minions attempted to put his plan into action does not necessarily require that the plan of action succeed as planned, in order to punish all of them for the roles that they played in following Trump's directives. As the committee report described in excruciating detail, the Trump plan to overturn the 2020 election had its origins long before the first vote was cast. The idea was to shape the battlefield in such a way that Trump's reelection victory was supposed to of been a foregone conclusion. At its heart was Trump's fabricated assertion that the election was rigged, an assertion that was repeated, tweeted, retweeted, and reasserted at every possible opportunity, so that Trump's followers would naturally assume that the allegations were true, simply by virtue of their repetition. That things didn't turn out that way had more to do with the sheer audacity of the effort, and the fact that it had to succeed in multiple states at once, and then be believed. When intimidation and lawsuits did not pan out, Trump and his followers resorted to creating counterfeit results in the form of forged certificates that falsely certified that state Electors in various battleground states had voted for Trump instead of for Joe Biden; and when that didn't work, Trump called upon his followers nationwide to assemble in Washington on January 6 in order to intimidate Congress, and if necessary overcome resistance within Congress by force. As we see, all of this was on a continuum starting with the Big Lie, followed by escalating violent rhetoric, falsification of documents, and finally physical assault on the nation's Capitol. The question of Trump's intent, and the intent of his closest associates, was always the same; and the fact that it took varying forms of unlawful behavior, culminating in a violent riot and sacking of the Capitol building does not, and could not, change the unlawful intent to avoid the peaceful transfer of power by whatever means Trump and his followers found necessary.
And the assault came within a whisker of succeeding. The idea that in each of the specific crimes charged had to be supported by different evidence is nowhere found in the law. There were individual behaviors at each stage along the way that validated and reinforced Trump's overall intent to overturn the election that he lost. All the rest can be offered up as evidence that negates whatever affirmative defenses Trump and his attorneys choose to advance, such as the suggestion that Trump didn't really know that he lost the election. The suggestion is laughable on its face, but each succeeding event merges with the pile of events to prove by overwhelming evidence that under no circumstances can Trump's prior knowledge and intent be doubted. In a lifetime of practicing law, I cannot recall any case that I heard of were so many absurd defenses have been raised by an individual or his codefendants that denied the obvious, and still they keep coming.
The Republicans want to argue that Trump should not be convicted because the defenses and precautions of National Capital law enforcement proved largely inadequate to the concentrated assault that they experienced. That's not a defense; if anything, it shows that Trump's people had so worm-holed the military and national security system that the conspirators thought they would be able to pull off this coup without facing any form of armed resistance from on the law enforcement or the military. If anything, the charges against Trump should include the intentional weakening of institutional guardrails intended to protect the government itself. But that's an argument for another day.
I intend to purchase my own copy of the committee report, which I plan to delve into from time to time. I will be much more interested in what the Department of Justice, and Special Counsel Jack Smith, will be doing in the months ahead. Given the heads-up that the House January 6 committee has given the Justice Department, I am expecting that they will be moving ahead speedily, at once broadening and refining their approach to these prosecutions so that whatever criminal trials on these matters need to be held will be concluded by the end of 2023. As I said, this is not complicated, and evidence of prior planning and complicity abound all over. The prosecutors have a job to do, and I would expect that they get with it, and to quit worrying about whether they have the quantum of proof necessary to convict Trump and his minions. The law is meant to be enforced, and a guilty state of mind can be proven in many different ways.
Thank you so much for clear summary. I hope the talking heads will heed your wise counsel, to seek out people who know what they're talking about instead of going round and round with each other -- but I'm pretty sure they won't. (They're too busy talking to each other -- the song "Pick a Little, Talk a Little" from the classic musical _The Music Man_ just popped into my head, can't imagine why.)
I think it's telling that the incoming GOP House "leadership" seems to have backed off its threats to "investigate the investigation." Obtuse as they are, they seem to get that this is not a good place for them to go.
I imagine them doing a war dance / exorcism in the well of the House like the guy who wore the buffalo headdress, whooping and hollering, trying to rid themselves of the shame and guilt they brought upon themselves. No such luck.
Arthur, once again you give me (and many others) encouragement that the Dumpster and his minions will face justice and (hopefully) pay for their crimes. "Facts are facts" says it all to me, and it should say it all to a jury.
Thank you, Arthur. I ordered my copy with Ari Melber's introduction when I first heard about it. It will make for interesting reading over the winter days ahead. The chapter titles alone are a siren's song.
I know I will enjoy what you have to say about the report. I thank you for all your work but I hope you take the time to enjoy your family and to have a happy holiday season.
Just a little light reading at bedtime. Julian, you will slog through 800-pages, but few in the media will. So, the report will die a quick death so they can get back to Zelensky’s fashion statement, and other Earth-shaking events that can be reduced to two sentences. Between the holidays and the Rethugs having a free-for-all over the speakership this important report is going to get buried. Score another one for the Rethugs.
What I've read so far makes me think that they had some real writers working on this thing, so it may have a longer shelf-and-cocktail-party life than, say, the Mueller report. Here's hoping . . . (P.S. Julian? Were you thinking of our state senator? ;-) )
Just from skimmimg for the last 45 minutes, I am thinking Cheney and Kinzinger were only there to focus the Commiittee on orangehead to save the party. They failed.
The report barely mentions, and certainly does not point out the complicity of the vast majority of Republicans right up to and including the coup and everything they have done since to act like it’s no big deal, certainly not worth a Congressional investigation Oh My Stars. It does not call into account the majority of the Representatives who voted not to certify the election AFTER the attack. It ignores much of Republicans actively ignoring, indeed attempting to cover up, what was plain for all to see. I mean we all know what they did to try and sweep this under the rug. But no grand indictment in this report. It focuses 99% on Trump when there’s an ongoing vast right wing conspiracy to overthrow the government. There’s no mention of the McConnell whipping Republicans to vote against impeachment. I just got up and I haven’t had my breakfast but I figure it’ll take most of the day to read it.
Lucian, take your time reading and digesting this tome and enjoy the holidays with family & friends. We'll all be here waiting for your superb analysis & comments. Meanwhile, take a look at Arthur Silen's very encouraging comments below.
Will I ever be able to sleep? This is like waiting for the sound of reindeer hooves on the rooftop!
Years ago l wrote a play in grad school which cost me my masters degree. The play was a rabid, morality play about the last days of Nixon called: Loyalty, Unexpurgated.
How was l to know my advisor was outraged! He quietly sunk my ship. It’s been the greatest impetus for my writing output!
The irony of his demise is too delicious to relate. Let’s just say that Karma’s a bitch!
And now Nixon is being canonized because he’s not Trump.
Keep smiling… It’s ain’t over yet!
In college I used material from Stan Freberg's LP on American History in a drama course...the prof was a big fan, an A for our group!
When Nixon died a friend's mother said "Nixon was a bastard and now he's a dead bastard. "
This is the best Christmas present I’ve ever had, finally the truth is going to have it’s day, I know that they will try to blur it’s clarity but this is going to be part of the record for that POS, that will forever taint any clear eyed look at what he did, if he had had a brain, we would be in way more trouble than we are now. If I could, I would personally thank everyone on the committee and all who worked for them, they have done a great service to our nation and deserve all of our gratitude 🙏.
We need more Republicans like Luttig and less like Eastman and Cruz (his former clerks).
https://www.yahoo.com/news/former-federal-appeals-court-judge-trump-could-be-sentenced-to-prison-224535748.html
824 pages of testimony gathered over almost 2 years of another day that will live in infamy and yet even now played down by Republicans as a little more than a normal tourist day., yet one where serious injuries and deaths occurred. Well lets see how many of these tourists and tourist guides wind up behind bars.
Re your singling out the the chapter titles, MSNBC's regular lawyers said the chapter headings could be from a novel.
Love it! Love the section titles. tfg and GOP must be fuming the Select Committee completed their work before they could be shut down by the new congress.
I spent the evening watching MSNBC, and listening to the talking heads ruminate, parse, and opine on whether Donald J Trump, and which of his assorted minions, can be indicted for conducting an insurrection, and all of their lesser included offenses, with a good expectation that they, and each of them, will duly and inevitably be convicted of those crimes.
The former prosecutors and Justice Department lawyers I watched and listened to make eminent good sense. That 845-page door stopper of a history contains some of the most detailed, vetted, and source-cited evidence of crime that one could imagine. On previous occasions, I've noted on these pages that the prosecutors are going to need to nail down the trial testimonies of all those that they intend to call as witnesses against Donald J. Trump, and five of his chief associates mentioned in the House January 6 committee report: Kenneth Chesebro, Rudolph Giuliani, Jeffrey Clark, and Mark Meadows. On the other hand, the talking heads from the Washington press corps have a tendency to overthink the quantum of proof that is necessary to convict someone of a serious felony. As a public service, I would suggest to them that instead of talking to each other, they access the Department of Justice website, and do their own legal research, by downloading the Justice Department's United States Attorneys' Manual, and then turned to Title IX and began looking at the substantive requirements for prosecuting the specific crimes in question, specifically the elements of the crime laid out in the manual, and then maybe, looking at some of the decided cases that apply those criminal elements to the case is at hand. It's not rocket science.
Some of these worthies undoubtedly went to law school at some point earlier in their careers, that's like sitting in the front row of a boxing match and scoring the hits and misses. It is understood that the house report was assembled and published without the input of Trump Republicans and their allies in the press. It's understood that they would disagree with everything the house committee said about the January 6 insurrection and the events leading up to it. But facts are facts. And the committee is relying on the sworn testimony of its witnesses, as vetted by staff attorneys, and how the individual elements of the various testimonies interleave and interlock with the testimony of other witnesses who did not have the opportunity to coordinate their testimonies with those of the principal witnesses. It is understood that witnesses to the same events may remember things differently from one another, depending upon their respective involvements and perspectives; but generally speaking, there is a penumbra, a Venn diagram, about which the witnesses are likely to agree. Absolute certainty is not required nor expected. What is required is a good faith effort to recollect events recorded, and to truthfully relate what was seen, heard, or experienced. People draw conclusions based upon events that they've seen and experienced. When an individual is described as telling people that the former president was thrilled at what he was seeing on television, or words to that effect, most people hearing such testimony would understand that the inference that the reporting witness was describing was a logical inference from what he had been witnessing over an extended period of time. No one is going to be able to deconstruct what they saw down to its granular elements, whether vocal, or in terms of body language. Everything merges together.
When people talk about parsing evidence there is a tendency to engage in something akin to the ancient philosophical riddle or conundrum known as Zeno's Paradox. That is the idea advanced by Greek philosopher Zeno of Elea in which an archer shoots an arrow from Point A toward Point B, but then he divides that distance of the arrow's flight into an infinitely subdivided set as a convergent series, in which the arrow never really reaches its target because it is always getting halfway there within each segment of the series down to nothingness. Philosophers have called this a logical paradox, but in reality, it is simply verbal legerdemain. The only thing that changes is the distance at which the arrow flies within each demarked segment traverses within its overall flight, with distance being the variable; but at some point, the arrow will hit its mark, regardless of philosophical objections. It is also a perfect example of overthinking a problem. Regardless of each of several events leading up to an intended outcome, the intended outcome remains the same. Whatever was done to achieve that outcome continues unabated, regardless of whether that intended outcome is actually achieved. The fact that Donald Trump's premeditated plan was the central organizing principle around which Trump's minions attempted to put his plan into action does not necessarily require that the plan of action succeed as planned, in order to punish all of them for the roles that they played in following Trump's directives. As the committee report described in excruciating detail, the Trump plan to overturn the 2020 election had its origins long before the first vote was cast. The idea was to shape the battlefield in such a way that Trump's reelection victory was supposed to of been a foregone conclusion. At its heart was Trump's fabricated assertion that the election was rigged, an assertion that was repeated, tweeted, retweeted, and reasserted at every possible opportunity, so that Trump's followers would naturally assume that the allegations were true, simply by virtue of their repetition. That things didn't turn out that way had more to do with the sheer audacity of the effort, and the fact that it had to succeed in multiple states at once, and then be believed. When intimidation and lawsuits did not pan out, Trump and his followers resorted to creating counterfeit results in the form of forged certificates that falsely certified that state Electors in various battleground states had voted for Trump instead of for Joe Biden; and when that didn't work, Trump called upon his followers nationwide to assemble in Washington on January 6 in order to intimidate Congress, and if necessary overcome resistance within Congress by force. As we see, all of this was on a continuum starting with the Big Lie, followed by escalating violent rhetoric, falsification of documents, and finally physical assault on the nation's Capitol. The question of Trump's intent, and the intent of his closest associates, was always the same; and the fact that it took varying forms of unlawful behavior, culminating in a violent riot and sacking of the Capitol building does not, and could not, change the unlawful intent to avoid the peaceful transfer of power by whatever means Trump and his followers found necessary.
And the assault came within a whisker of succeeding. The idea that in each of the specific crimes charged had to be supported by different evidence is nowhere found in the law. There were individual behaviors at each stage along the way that validated and reinforced Trump's overall intent to overturn the election that he lost. All the rest can be offered up as evidence that negates whatever affirmative defenses Trump and his attorneys choose to advance, such as the suggestion that Trump didn't really know that he lost the election. The suggestion is laughable on its face, but each succeeding event merges with the pile of events to prove by overwhelming evidence that under no circumstances can Trump's prior knowledge and intent be doubted. In a lifetime of practicing law, I cannot recall any case that I heard of were so many absurd defenses have been raised by an individual or his codefendants that denied the obvious, and still they keep coming.
The Republicans want to argue that Trump should not be convicted because the defenses and precautions of National Capital law enforcement proved largely inadequate to the concentrated assault that they experienced. That's not a defense; if anything, it shows that Trump's people had so worm-holed the military and national security system that the conspirators thought they would be able to pull off this coup without facing any form of armed resistance from on the law enforcement or the military. If anything, the charges against Trump should include the intentional weakening of institutional guardrails intended to protect the government itself. But that's an argument for another day.
I intend to purchase my own copy of the committee report, which I plan to delve into from time to time. I will be much more interested in what the Department of Justice, and Special Counsel Jack Smith, will be doing in the months ahead. Given the heads-up that the House January 6 committee has given the Justice Department, I am expecting that they will be moving ahead speedily, at once broadening and refining their approach to these prosecutions so that whatever criminal trials on these matters need to be held will be concluded by the end of 2023. As I said, this is not complicated, and evidence of prior planning and complicity abound all over. The prosecutors have a job to do, and I would expect that they get with it, and to quit worrying about whether they have the quantum of proof necessary to convict Trump and his minions. The law is meant to be enforced, and a guilty state of mind can be proven in many different ways.
Or, as John Adams famously said: “Facts are stubborn things.”
Thank you so much for clear summary. I hope the talking heads will heed your wise counsel, to seek out people who know what they're talking about instead of going round and round with each other -- but I'm pretty sure they won't. (They're too busy talking to each other -- the song "Pick a Little, Talk a Little" from the classic musical _The Music Man_ just popped into my head, can't imagine why.)
I think it's telling that the incoming GOP House "leadership" seems to have backed off its threats to "investigate the investigation." Obtuse as they are, they seem to get that this is not a good place for them to go.
I imagine them doing a war dance / exorcism in the well of the House like the guy who wore the buffalo headdress, whooping and hollering, trying to rid themselves of the shame and guilt they brought upon themselves. No such luck.
Arthur, once again you give me (and many others) encouragement that the Dumpster and his minions will face justice and (hopefully) pay for their crimes. "Facts are facts" says it all to me, and it should say it all to a jury.
Thank you, Arthur. I ordered my copy with Ari Melber's introduction when I first heard about it. It will make for interesting reading over the winter days ahead. The chapter titles alone are a siren's song.
The best kind of Xmas present - truth, consequences and accountibility. Thank you!
Holy hand grenade
I know I will enjoy what you have to say about the report. I thank you for all your work but I hope you take the time to enjoy your family and to have a happy holiday season.
wowza.
reads like a summary for a cops n robbers action flick.
cant wait til it hits our screens
Just a little light reading at bedtime. Julian, you will slog through 800-pages, but few in the media will. So, the report will die a quick death so they can get back to Zelensky’s fashion statement, and other Earth-shaking events that can be reduced to two sentences. Between the holidays and the Rethugs having a free-for-all over the speakership this important report is going to get buried. Score another one for the Rethugs.
It's up to us to keep up the pressure. I know you'll do your part.
Some in the media will; certainly not any of the propaganda spinners.
Let’s hope you’re wrong. But l must confess, l have my doubts.
What I've read so far makes me think that they had some real writers working on this thing, so it may have a longer shelf-and-cocktail-party life than, say, the Mueller report. Here's hoping . . . (P.S. Julian? Were you thinking of our state senator? ;-) )
Just from skimmimg for the last 45 minutes, I am thinking Cheney and Kinzinger were only there to focus the Commiittee on orangehead to save the party. They failed.
What in your 45 minutes of skimming gave you that impression?
The report barely mentions, and certainly does not point out the complicity of the vast majority of Republicans right up to and including the coup and everything they have done since to act like it’s no big deal, certainly not worth a Congressional investigation Oh My Stars. It does not call into account the majority of the Representatives who voted not to certify the election AFTER the attack. It ignores much of Republicans actively ignoring, indeed attempting to cover up, what was plain for all to see. I mean we all know what they did to try and sweep this under the rug. But no grand indictment in this report. It focuses 99% on Trump when there’s an ongoing vast right wing conspiracy to overthrow the government. There’s no mention of the McConnell whipping Republicans to vote against impeachment. I just got up and I haven’t had my breakfast but I figure it’ll take most of the day to read it.
Lucian, take your time reading and digesting this tome and enjoy the holidays with family & friends. We'll all be here waiting for your superb analysis & comments. Meanwhile, take a look at Arthur Silen's very encouraging comments below.
Wow!