By Kenneth Tiven

The US Congressional probe into former US President Donald Trump’s coup against his own government is like the movie about the steamship Titanic hitting an iceberg. Despite knowing the ending—it sank—we remain fascinated with the story of exactly how it happened.  

A connect-the dots-puzzle created by the House Investigating Committee has created a compelling picture of how Donald Trump and his loyalists planned a coup. Insiders in the Trump Administration have given sworn testimony that Trump was told repeatedly there was no election fraud, that his plan to overturn Joe Biden’s victory was illegal.  

In America, all federal government officials swear an oath to defend the Constitution, not the president. Despite this, most of the witnesses explaining what Trump did or did not do failed their oath to protect the Constitution against the president. Most have spoken out now only because the Committee compelled testimony. Trump seems to have clearly violated his oath of office as well: “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” The fourth federal law, 18 U.S.C. 1918 provides penalties for violation of oath office described in 5 U.S.C. 7311 which include: (1) removal from office and; (2) confinement or a fine, remedial and enforceability measures.

Several loyalists had asked the White House for pardons after January 6, which could be considered an admission of guilt. The first name revealed at the Third Hearing was John Eastman, a conservative lawyer who had clerked for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Eastman offered Trump novel theories as to why Vice President Mike Pence could send the election back to the state legislatures to pick electors, hopefully to keep Democrat Joe Biden from taking office despite winning a majority of both popular and electoral votes. 

The Committee has found evidence that Trump’s Big Lie served a double purpose: a chance to maybe keep the White House and an opportunity to make at least $250 million dollars running a grift asking small donors for contributions to a fake legal fund. 

You almost have to admire the consistency of Trump’s mendacity, while accepting that the former president’s instincts and career were inherited from his father who was a ruthless builder and landlord in New York City. As a rich kid who inherited his father’s fortune and business, Trump has always said he hates being told no in a business deal. Equally obvious is that Trump has no experience or interest in consensus management.  

For Americans who have watched farcical partisan hearings for two decades, the House of Representatives special committee is unusual in many respects. It has spent a year interviewing witnesses and participants in the 2020 campaign, gathering evidence and video of every speech, rally, and tweet that the president produced in 2020 and after the election. The fact-finding phase is over. 

The televised hearing is essentially a police procedural crime series based on months of taking testimony and correlating everything minute by minute. Adding impact, the presentation has been anything but a traditional partisan charade. It is low-key without partisan members asking questions or badgering witnesses. The calm directness is a refreshing aspect of understanding what happened.

The Republican Party and news media aligned with it have treated the hearings as a non-event for the most part.  An email Thursday morning from House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy avoided the hearings  altogether, suggesting Americans should be concerned about  crime, inflation and high petrol prices.  He believes, “After more than a year with Joe Biden in office, our nation is in crisis.” 

Hearing Three 

This focused on the pressure exerted on Vice President Mike Pence, as presiding officer of the Senate, to not certify Biden’s election as President. Conservative California lawyer John Eastman had convinced Trump and lawyer Rudi Giuliani that his originalist reading of the Constitution empowered Pence to reject votes from certain states and to send the results back to those states in hopes of gaining electoral votes for Trump.

Eastman availed himself of the Fifth Amendment protection to not testify against himself when the Committee interviewed him under oath. He took it 100 times! Eastman had tried to enlist support before January 6 from a Justice Department lawyer. That lawyer told the House Committee he had advised  Eastman to get “the best criminal lawyer you can find,” because you will need one. Eastman asked Giuliani to put him on the pardons list, which nearly happened. 

The committee seems to be highlighting that Eastman has legal exposure for his activities: he privately asserted that there was no legal basis for the Pence plan even though he publicly promoted it as a lawful plan of action. Federal prosecutors could argue that he knew he was doing something wrong. 

Michael Luttig, a retired federal appeals court judge, testified forcefully that if Pence followed Trump’s directive it would have “plunged America into what I believe would have been tantamount to a revolution within a constitutional crisis.” Luttig is a widely respected judge who clerked for both former Chief Justice  Warren Burger and for Justice Antonin Scalia. He was appointed to the federal bench by President George H.W. Bush in 1991.

Luttig advised Pence, his lawyer, and his chief of staff  regarding the illegality of what Trump ordered his vice president to do. Trump’s rage against Pence was part of his speech before the insurrectionists marched on the Capitol. The televised hearing played video clips of the crowd chanting, “Hang Mike Pence,” moments after Trump ripped Pence to the crowd at the Ellipse. 

Congressional investigations have a way of stretching from months to years,  demonstrated by the House committee probe into 2012’s Benghazi Libya attack. This was a Republican effort to destroy the reputation of Hillary Clinton, then Secretary of State. The Republicans controlled committees so they made it last two years. 

This session of Congress is equally divided between political parties with Democrats called the majority, because the president is a Democrat. When the Republican House leadership decided not to be a part of the committee in June 2021 it made what some then considered a catastrophic mistake. 

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, appointed two Republicans whom she felt were fair minded to sit with seven Democrats, making Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney vice chairman of the committee. Cheney is a conservative thinker but was always leery of Trump’s behavior. Now she is a pariah to Trump supporters. Unwilling to talk to the committee are several Republican representatives.  Some apparently were also active in encouraging the insurrection and have refused subpoenas to testify.

The people, places, actions and communications have been thoroughly analyzed as integral to the probe. So called “electronic fingerprints” were left by everyone sending texts and videos on all sides. Each hearing day had a clear and precise objective.

Hearing One 

This set the baseline for what the probe accomplished. Committee chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson kept it simple, saying Donald Trump organized a coup against his own government. For two hours on prime time television, the committee used video from the January 6 insurrection and interviews with key witnesses to remind millions of Americans of just how violent the day became. 

Democracy hung in the balance, said Thompson. Having sifted through so much evidence, the members of the committee could recognize that the central figure was an insecure president, filled with rage and grievances who found willing accomplices within the government and around the nation. Determined to maintain power they set off to undermine voting, the core aspect of democracy. America has a near mythical belief in the will of the people, all of the people, not just the rich and powerful. >

The planned tactics of two paramilitary groups, the Proud Boys and The Oath Keepers, were made clear from time-stamped video. They were marching to the Capital by 10:38 in the morning, well before Trump started speaking at noon to the rally at the open space on the national mall close to the White House. 

The committee with its videos and testimony made the explicit point that the violence was preplanned, not a spontaneous outburst from incendiary remarks made by the former president and some of his advisors. 

Testimony of many Trump insiders contrasts with their unwillingness to say anything about what was happening when it was happening. Commenting on this, Stephen Colbert, the late night TV host and avid observer of politicians, described them as “Trump’s spineless toadies.”

Most of the former Trump inner circle are telling their version of the truth now in hopes of salvaging their reputations. Lynn Cheney was having none of it when it came to political colleagues. “I say this to my Republican colleagues who are defending the indefensible: There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain.”

She is paying a price. Wyoming Republicans are doing everything they can to defeat her in the primary elections for Congress. Trump’s former campaign manager Bill Stepien claims to have been truthful in telling Trump he lost. Yet, now he’s the campaign manager for the woman running against Cheney in Wyoming. That candidate still claims the presidential election was stolen. What Americans are hearing from the Republican officials is obviously ”situational behavior” that might rehabilitate their reputations. 

Based on voting, past performance and parental DNA, it was laughable when Trump told Wyoming voters recently that Cheney had “thrown in her lot with the radical left.” Her dad is former Vice President Dick Cheney, the arch conservative who dominated the Administration of George Bush.

Frank Bruni, a New York Times columnist said, “She’s no doubt playing a long game, with its own wager: that somewhere downfield, Republicans will rediscover a semblance of sanity, and she’ll be rewarded for not having lost her marbles.” 

Hearing Two

If hearing one focused on the Capitol attack, the second was about the Big Lie that the election was stolen. Bill Barr, the US attorney general in former President Trump’s cabinet, testified that the real estate wheeler-dealer turned politician was “detached from reality” after losing the 2020 election for a second term.

The House Investigating Committee might have been scripting a Hollywood or Bollywood crime series. They mixed and matched each Trump insider’s recollection of telling Trump he lost to a Trump speech a day or so later claiming it was all stolen. Said Barr, “There was never an indication of interest in what the actual facts were.”

Barr’s languages was less than lawyer-like, using words like “rubbish, nonsense bullshit, garbage, crazy, annoying, idiotic, stupid” to describe, how fundamentally  silly Donald Trump’s claims about the 2020 election being stolen really were. Barr inferred he quit as the Attorney General, because at some point he realized that the former president was no longer reasonable. However, Barr had protected Trump ferociously for four years and could not have missed Trump’s behavioral style. Apparently the go-along attitude disappeared when the Nation’s Capitol was ransacked.

Trump spokeswoman Liz Harrington responded to this by accusing Barr of being a “cowardly RINO” and a “shill” for “Marxist Democrats” — a pretty remarkable allegation when you consider how much Barr bent over backward for Trump. If all of this never results in criminal prosecution of the former president, it has prompted an extraordinary round of sniping and infighting.

Testimony from campaign aides Bill Stepien and Jason Miller suggested Giuliani was drunk election night while urging Trump to declare victory before the vote counting was finished.  Rudy Giuliani reacted by accusing them of perjury. Giuliani also suggested they might have taken bribes for testifying to that effect. This and other tweets were deleted by Giuliani and another former White House aide, Alyssa Farah Griffin, confirmed this week that Giuliani “appeared inebriated” on election night.

More hearings are to come, focusing on a pressure campaign carried out by Trump’s allies to get state legislators and election officials to change the results of the vote, Cheney said. 

The committee is expected to reveal evidence showing how Trump asked Georgia election officials to find enough votes to allow him to win the state. The final hearings, Cheney said, will focus on the words Trump used to summon “a violent mob and directed them illegally to march on the U.S. Capitol.” There will be evidence of Trump refusing to speak with military leaders to try to control the violence, waiting several hours before calling on rioters to disperse.

The Trumps will be questioned under oath in mid-July by lawyers from the New York State attorney general’s office, unless the state’s highest court intervenes. The agreement in New York State Supreme Court, says that Trump, Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump have agreed to appear for testimony that will begin on Friday, July 15, and end the following week. 

The state attorney general, Letitia James, is close to the final phase of her investigation into Trump and the business practices of his company, The Trump Organization. This court appearance follows a number of legal setbacks for the former president, whose lawyers had fought the attorney general for months, hoping to avoid questioning. 

The Titanic disaster killed an estimated 1,517 people, about 68% percent of the people and crew aboard. The Trump presidency did not kill Democracy. It appears to have survived a near death experience.

-The writer is a former Vice President of CNN News and Foreign Editor of the Washington Post.

By Kenneth Tiven

Donald Trump organized a coup against his own government, said House Investigating Committee chairman Bennie Thompson summarizing what its probe has documented in the past year. 

For two hours on prime time television the committee used video from the January 6 insurrection and interviews with key witnesses to remind millions of Americans of just how violent the day became. Democracy hung in the balance, said Thompson.

Testimony made clear that two paramilitary groups, the Proud Boys and The Oath Keepers, were marching to the Capital by 10:38 in the morning, well before Trump started speaking at noon to the rally at the open space on the national mall close to the White House. 

The committee with its videos and statements made the explicit point that the violence was pre-planned and not a spontaneous outburst from incendiary remarks made by the former president and some of his advisors. 

In fact the committee promised that subsequent sessions would show that even before the November election Trump was told he might lose, and that his efforts to maintain power regardless started that early.

A substantial part of the committee’s evidence in this two-hour hearing was presented by Republican Liz Cheney of Wyoming, who had defied party leadership and joined the committee. The GOP had refused to participate, perhaps aware of how many of its congressional members participated in what President Trump was telling people. In her remarks, Cheney made clear her unhappiness with the political leadership.

“I say this to my Republican colleagues who are defending the indefensible: There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain.” Wyoming Republicans are doing everything they can to defeat her in the November elections for Congress.

In multiple video clips of testimony, former Attorney General William Barr explained that he told Trump there was no substantial evidence of fraud. The committee outlined the revolt in the Justice Department that prevented  Trump from ousting its leadership in favor of a personally loyal lawyer.

A video clip of Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter, has her telling the committee she treated Barr’s views as decisive. “I accepted what he was saying.” Her husband Jared Kushner, in a deposition with the committee, suggested he didn’t take threats seriously among senior staff about resignations. I thought they were whining, he said. 

This is the first of six committee hearings which will be televised this month.  They have been organized around themes and kept two hours or less for a world which prefers compact news filled with viral moments. Most networks and news channels carried it except Fox News, which apparently did not want to upset its largely older right-wing leaning audience. Fox host Sean Hannity’s texts to the White House chief of staff begging Trump to call off the insurrection were included in tonight’s presentation. 

The videos of the invasion of the Capital were just as shocking to watch now as they were in real time 15 months ago. Capitol Police officer Caroline Edwards injured defending a police barricade described the events as a “war. And I’m not combat trained,” she said.   

The videos and animations were powerful in communicating the message that this was a planned insurrection. Will it result in Justice Department prosecution of those involved? That is not part of this committee’s mandate. 

By Kenneth Tiven in the USA

The impeachment trial of former president Donald Trump ended with a vote against conviction but with a surprise post-vote public admission by the Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell that, “Trump is morally and practically responsible” for the insurrection.

McConnell’s vote for acquittal was based on jurisdiction, he said, because his interpretation of the Constitution’s impeachment clause requires removal from office. He implied that many in his Republican caucus agreed because with Trump out of office he couldn’t be convicted. Decisions using a process issue rather than the substantive issue are commonplace in 21st century American politics.

The final vote was 57-43, considered an acquittal because a super majority of the Senate as Jury — or 67 votes– is required for conviction.  Impeachment is a constitutional matter, not part of the criminal code of the United States. Trump’s trio of lawyers spent a good deal of time whinging about the lack of traditional courtroom process while substantially misstating facts. Their style channeled their client rather well.

Lead impeachment manager Rep. Jamie Raskin said nothing Democrats did with evidence or witnesses would have made a difference based on McConnell’s almost confessional post-trial statement in the Senate. McConnell has been bossing these Republicans around for twelve years as Majority leader and they generally do what he tells them to do.

 Of the seven Republicans voting for conviction, two are retiring in 2022, and only Lisa Murkowski of Alaska might seek reelection in 2022. She has bucked the Republican Party before winning in 2010 as a write-in candidate. Mitt Romney is up in 2024 and three others were just reelected to terms that expire in 2026.  Senate terms are six years long but staggered by thirds on the calendar, ostensibly to promote continuity in the Senate,

Will Republican voters remember that McConnell said “… Americans beat and bloodied our own police. They stormed the Senate floor, they tried to hunt down the speaker of the house.”

Many voters were apolitical until Trump’s grievance campaign reflected their unhappiness with life and politics. They may not like McConnell faulting the insurrectionists: “They did this because they had been fed wild falsehoods by the most powerful man on earth… A mob was assaulting the Capitol in his name… carrying his flags and screaming their loyalty to him. It was obvious that only President Trump could end this.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, called the Republican senators cowards, criticizing McConnell for refusing to call an emergency Senate session in mid-January for impeachment while Trump was still in the White House but then using the trial’s delay as a reason to acquit Trump.

Discussions about calling witnesses stemmed from a Republican Congresswoman recounting House Minority leader Kevin McCarthy telling her he asked Trump “to publicly and forcefully call off the riot.” Trump responded that antifa, not his supporters, was responsible. When McCarthy said that was not true, the former president was curt. “Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are,” McCarthy told Jaime Herrera Beutler  a six-term representative from Washington State.

Ultimately the Democrats and Republicans agreed to put her comments into evidence but not call witnesses. Republicans threatened hundreds of witnesses that could have stretched this trial out for months.

The fourth presidential impeachment trial in American history is over. There are limited precedents as this the first time a president had left office before the trial. As has happened numerous times before, Trump, escaped a legal problem on a technicality, even when the case involves a violent effort to overthrow the government.  His exposure in criminal and civil lawsuits suggests that he will need lawyers for the foreseeable future.

Now perhaps the Congress can get moving quickly on issues related to the economy, the COVID-19 pandemic, immigration issues, so much to deal with in the wake of four years of Trumpism, a good deal of it with close cooperation from then majority leader McConnell.   When Sen. Chuck Schumer, who became Senate Majority leader with a 50-50 senate, spoke after McConnnell and offering this warning:

“Heed his words, ‘remember that day forever’, but not for the reasons the former president intended. … Remember the screams of the bloody officer… his body trapped in the breach… remember the three Capitol police officers who lost their lives…remember how close our democracy came to ruin, my fellow Americans, remember that day January 6, forever.

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By Kenneth Tiven in the USA

President Trump has created dubious history with less than a week to go before he is replaced by Joe Biden.  He has a been impeached with a losing score of 232 to 197 in the House of Representatives. Unlike his favorite golf gambit, there are no mulligans or do overs, just an ignominious exit into a very different ex-presidency than predecessors have enjoyed. When the Capitol demonstration turned violent, killing five people, it was a step too far. The very politicians who were the intended victims of the insurrection decided impeachment. From fear comes anger, building up because the physical and emotional destruction so vividly represents four years of national decay under Trump’s presidency. Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, the sharp tongued progressive Democrat from New York City said she was uncomfortable going to an “extraction point” as security officials insisted,

“because there were QAnon and white-supremacist sympathizers and, frankly, white-supremacist members of Congress in that extraction point who I know and who I have felt would disclose my location and would create opportunities to allow me to be hurt, kidnapped, or worse.”

The House debate on impeachment was limited to two hours. It followed a predictable path as Republicans found ways to criticize their own voters while minimizing the president’s responsibility. Ten Republicans did support impeachment because Trump incited an insurrection that failed. Think about it.  If that mob had actually succeeded in derailing Biden’s election certification would a single Republican congressperson have dared to call for Trump’s impeachment?

The most surprising vote was not so surprising upon analysis. Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, just elected with 70% of the vote there, is the third ranking Republican in the House leadership. Former Vice President Dick Cheney is has her dad. She has his aptitude for political calculus. She’s picked her side of whatever becomes of the Republican Party in the decade ahead. An open question is how many, if any, of the Republican Senators will do the same if there is a trial phase to the impeachment. The Senate acts as judge and jury in this matter.

Is Trump clueless or just existing in a fantasy world? Making his first public statement since the insurrection, the president took no responsibility for his remarks that incited the crowd to attack. “People thought what I said was totally appropriate,” he said claiming racial justice protests over the summer were “the real problem.”   The insurrectionist mob was very white and very middle class, not the working poor of the heartland often thought to be his bases. It seems that lies incubated in a digital-media fairyland helped forge a common purpose from among strangers.

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Usually a second conviction follows which bans him from any elective office in the USA. Right now Trump is suffering a lifetime Twitter ban for incendiary and false statements. Facebook contemplates the same punishment for willful misinformation about the election. Without social media at his fingertips, he appears a silent brooding sphinx waiting out the last days of his reign. A wary nation wonders because his most vocal followers promise more violence before and after president-elect Biden is inaugurated on the Capitol front steps on January 20. Security will be ultra tight and it would surprise few people if it were moved to an “undisclosed location” at the last moment.  

By Kenneth Tiven in the US

When a mob invaded the US Capitol’s House and Senate chambers on Wednesday America’s belief that it is an exceptional democracy ended. None other than President Donald Trump had suggested to an army of his supporters that they march from the White House to Congress to protest the certification of the Electoral College results, a pro forma event that officially makes Joe Biden the 46h president on January 20.

What was slated to be a protest march (#StopTheSteal and #MarchForTrump) turned into a riot as Trump supporters broke into the House and Senate chambers and roamed the halls of the capital complex, while others surrounded the building. A largely outnumbered contingent of Capitol police mostly stared at them. Inside 100 Senators and nearly 435 Representatives along with Vice President Mike Pence and support staff were eventually hustled to safer places by Secret Service and police who were inside the building.

It took all afternoon for the various law enforcement groups called to the scene to arrive. Meanwhile, the crowd waved flags and Trump banners shouting epithets at the police. The crowd of largely mask less folks milled around as if they were at a championship football game. The law and order mantra of Trump and his supporters was missing in action even if some folks waved Blue Lives Matter flags.

In late afternoon Trump finally recorded a message for network television channels asking the protestors to leave the Capitol. However Trump first told his supporters, “I feel your pain,” claiming he won the election in a landslide but had it stolen – the same baseless claims he has made since losing the popular vote election 60 days ago. Calling the mob  “special” he said they should now go home in peace.

Trumps speech proved meaningless. About three hours after this insurrection started a large contingent of law enforcement officers began to seriously disperse the crowd as a curfew was issued for 18:00 on Washington’s stets.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi later announced that the House and Senate would reconvene at 20:30 to finish the pro forma presidential certification process including limited debate.

All of this came on the same day the results from Georgia’s runoff elections sent two Democrats to the US Senate, giving Democrats majority control, which will greatly aid Biden’ ability to get things passed and done.

There is irony everywhere today. Trump’s presidential term started with no incoming transition plan, lots of chaos and no respect for tradition. His operating approach depended on deflection, denial and delay when things went wrong. Remember the medical crisis where he delayed, deflected and claimed no responsibility for a pandemic that has killed more than 350,000 people in America and is getting worse not better.

Twitter has locked his account for at least 12 hours so we don’t have his assessment, what we have from all corners of the US and global political and media sphere is condemnation and worry about what Trump might do in his remaining 14 days in office.

Viewing today’s experience was a humiliating experience for most Americans and for people around the world who have admired the USA for political stability.

A longtime Washington journalist and Congressional insider saw another aspect. Jim Jaffe, with decades on House committee staff, felt that President-elect Biden’s comments including “Stand Up Mr. President” were precise, measured and reflected American values. Biden said, “Our Democracy is under unprecedented assault.” Jaffe’s point is that today’s display of domestic terrorism strengthens Biden’s approach because it shows people what happens when you let a narcissist president do what he wants. He says, this will change the conservatives in elected office who have felt first hand the fear generated by mob rule.

Majority control in a 50:50 Senate comes because the rules reflect Vice President Kamala Harris’ role as Senate President with tie breaking responsibility. So Democrats  will control committee assignments and nominations, meaning  more may get done in the first six months than anyone thought possible a few weeks ago.

The Capitol police working with the Metropolitan DC police seemed  out of their depth as this event mushroomed into something  they should have anticipated. It is reported that Trump was reluctant to invoke the National Guard so Vice President Pence did it. The day’s law enforcement failures will provide one more issue for the new administration to handle immediately.

The Congress reconvened at 8:30 in their chambers. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said the insurrection by unhinged thugs failed, adding  “We are going to work together.” Oklahoma Senator James Langford, one of the Republican objectors, said the proposal for a commission to investigate claims of voting fraud is off the table.  The discussion will probably deal only with Arizona ballot security, the case in progress when the riot broke out. The absurdity of this performance art in a Congressional matter is obvious since some of the strictest voting procedures in the USA are in Arizona.  Senator Mitch Romney, who had once lost a presidential race said,

“No Congressional audit is ever going to convince these people so long as the president keeps telling them he won. The best way to show respect for the voters is to tell them the truth.”

The actions of the day have sobered up some of the most loyal and critical Republicans who have been carrying  water for the president. Democrat Chuck Schumer, about to  become majority leader, said January  6 would live in infamy along with President  Roosevelt’s description of December 7, 1941, the  Pearl Harbor Attack as a day of infamy for the USA.

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There are two weeks left in Trump’s presidency. There has been sufficient evidence for nearly four years to suggest how bad things could become. Politicians who have hidden behind a ‘see no evil, hear no evil’  response to Trump’s  behavior brought the nation to this unprecedented spasm of authoritarian-inspired violence.