The informal title of tomorrow's hearing is "The Big Lie" and among other things it will show that,
...Trump’s fiction of a stolen election was used as a fund-raising tool, bringing in hundreds of millions of dollars between Election Day 2020 and Jan. 6. A fraudulent fund-raising effort could be grounds for a possible criminal referral to the Justice Department against Trump and his allies.
And some on the committee have long believed that one way they could break through to Mr. Trump’s supporters would be to prove to them that they had been duped into donating their money to a bogus cause.
I have read that previously, remotely. Those on the committee who believe so may well be correct; my own sense is that save 46-1 getting caught in bed with a live boy or a dead girl nothing will shake the Trash from the stink.
This sounds like a real hearing, with real testimony and the potential for contentious questions and answers. 46-1's last campaign manager, Bill Stepien, will testify--under subpoena, indicating reluctance. Stepien is currently managing the campaign of Harriet Hageman, the 46-1-endorsed opponent of committee vice chair Liz Cheney. Predict Cheney will not Stepien off the hook if he tries to obfuscate, re-direct, or otherwise not answer directly Cheney's questions.
Chris Stirewalt, the former political editor at Fox News who was fired after Fox correctly called the 2020 president election in Arizona for Mr. Biden, a move that angered Mr. Trump, will appear along with Stepien.
Quoting directly from NYT:
Aides said the committee would also try on Monday to show how the rioters who stormed the Capitol had echoed back Mr. Trump’s words, and cited him as their motivation in storming the building in an attempt to stop Congress from formalizing his defeat.
There simply is no question of that and never has been. It was for that reason that Twitter initially suspended 46-1. In Day I the committee showed snippets of a half dozen or so Trash who unambiguously stated that they attempted the coup because 46-1 "called" them.
Finally the committee will present testimony that 46-1 was told repeatedly, "bluntly," that he had lost and there was none but the usual smattering of fraud, far, far less than that needed to seriously call into question the results in even one state, the closest being Georgia, much less all five he was trying to overturn.
I am a retired attorney who spent every day of his 40-year career in criminal law. It is true, as I read one lawyer say that the two basic questions that any prosecution must answer before proceeding further with its decision-making are 1) was a crime committed and 2) did the target have the requisite intent. Number one is a no-brainer. On number two the committee intends to show that Trump knew that the claims of elections fraud were, in General Barr's testimony, "bullshit." This is the thing: I have prosecuted and defended individuals where the crime was indisputed and the evidence that they had the intent was clear beyond any reasonable doubt to any reasonable jury--but they would have passed a lie detector test that they did not intend it. There are many reasons for that, including foundationally that there is no lie detector test that has the imprimatur of reliability; including that with the passage of time such truth-seeking tools become less reliable than at the outset. But in addition, and this goes to any criminal referral against 46-1 for spreading lies--and lies they were!--about the integrity of the election, you have to prove that THIS defendant knew in his heart and his mind that he was knowingly spreading lies. I believe that an overwhelming portion of the readership of this blog and other media would agree with me that if you did polygraph, or truth-serum, 46-1, then, after the election was called for Biden, any time since, or now, that he would pass. That is, he really believes it, and on that a criminal prosecution would likely founder. That does not mean that there are not other crimes, like fraudulent fund-raising, that 46-1 could not be charged with, he could as far as I can see, incitement is another, but on whatever charge the committee is circling whose gravamen is "Trump knew" I am squeamish.
I'll be watching at 10 a.m., hope you will too. Good night.
