1/6 Insurrection Investigation

[Rick Plant]

Trump 'set us up': Capitol cop 'shocked' former president knew he was endangering police officers



WASHINGTON, D.C. — Metro Police Officer Daniel Hodges has been among those sitting in the audience at the public hearings for the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 attacks. Hodges is most well-known for the footage of him bleeding from the mouth and the doors being used to smash his body on that fateful day.

After the sixth hearing, one official from the committee went over to him to talk about their gratitude toward the officers for their efforts that day. He told the officer that he was just glad that what he did gave members the time necessary to get to safety.

Speaking to CNN after the hearing, Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-FL) said that she watched the faces of the officers as they learned that the White House was well aware that the whole ordeal would be violent.

“They’re not here to hurt me," Hutchinson recalled Trump saying.

Officer Hodges told Raw Story that he doesn't have any insider knowledge, and each time he hears the witnesses, it is new information for him.

"Most of what I hear is shocking to me," he told reporters outside the committee hearing room on Tuesday. "I mean, hearing that he essentially set us up, yeah, that's shocking."

He went on to say that he hopes the public understands that the witnesses are professional political people who are all Republicans.

"They're all about the truth," Hodges continued. "They can't help the fact that the truth is hurtful to or critical of one party."

He cited Trump's comment that the crowd wasn't there to hurt him, "implying that they were there to hurt someone and he knows who and then he said, yeah, they can march on the Capitol. So, he set us up."

Hodges went on to say that "the only person Trump cares about is himself. So, I know that he doesn't really care about officers' safety or the safety of Congress as long as he gets what he wants."

https://www.rawstory.com/trump-set-officers-up/

[Rick Plant]

Next J6 hearings could be even more explosive: Insider hints there's more testimony coming about the riot's 'pivot man for everything'



Former GOP Rep. Denver Riggleman, who worked as a senior staff member for the House Select Committee Investigating the Jan. 6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol, suggested that the bombshell testimony at Tuesday's public hearing was just the beginning.

"TRUMP SOUGHT TO JOIN JAN. 6 MOB," was the headline online by The New York Times. "Enraged, He Lunged for Limo Wheel, Aide Says."

"Trump wanted armed mob to march to Capitol, sought to join, aide says," was The Washington Post headline.

Riggleman was interviewed about the hearing by MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace.

"I want to be very careful in how I say this, Nicolle. I said Mark Meadows was the MVP of the committee of the investigation. Today, I think we see Mark Meadows is the Rosetta Stone of the investigation. He was sort of the pivot man for everything happening between these groups and up to the president," he said.

"When you hear an individual on the couch sending text messages -- I have the unique insight into being the first to see some of those text messages after we identified them -- so when I saw that at the beginning, the committee saw the same thing and they automatically knew that what they saw on the text messages -- there was a story here they could break apart," he explained. "We have to know this too, Nicolle, and I'm being very careful, there are 1,000 text messages that we know that we hadn't seen, that he said that were privileged."

Riggleman said, "...I don't think the American public has seen anything yet."

"Oh, wow," Wallace interjected.

"I actually believe that Cassidy Hutchinson was the bridge to the following -- and I will be very careful here -- a bridge to the operational planning and the data the committee still has in his back pocket," he continued. "So again, Mark Meadows is the MVP player for the committee. I think it is the Rosetta Stone. He was in the middle of it all and I think it puts his legal team in a tremendously challenging position."

Watch below:

[Rick Plant]

Legal expert lays out 6 crimes Trump may have committed — according to testimony in shocking Jan. 6 hearing

Donald Trump committed six crimes that were newly revealed during Tuesday's public hearings of the House Select Committee Investigating the Jan. 6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol, according to at least one legal expert.

MSNBC anchor Nicolle Wallace interviewed former Deputy Assistant Attorney General Harry Litman on Tuesday about Trump allegedly thinking that Vice President Mike Pence deserved to be hanged for not participating in his coup attempt.

"I mean, it's a crime to threaten the president or the vice president," Wallace said. "You've now got a president celebrating a pledge to hang his own number two. What is the exposure on that?"

"In a day of huge fireworks, Nicolle, I think this was one of the two or three most incendiary," Litman replied. "It's almost like a law school exam, I counted six new crimes potentially."

Litman also served as a U.S. Attorney and teaches constitutional law at the University of California San Diego and the University of California, Los Angeles.

"But look, to date, the inquiry has all been, 'Is he aware of the violence? Does he know what could happen?' We have a completely different portrait of him now," he explained. "It's someone who is not just aware of it, he's eager for it, he's fomenting it. He's grabbing Secret Service people by the clavicle and trying to grab the wheel so that he can orchestrate it."

"So, we're way past, 'Might he be aware?' And very much into the territory of, he wants this to happen, and as you say, the 'this' here is literally the tearing from limb to limb of his vice president. That's maybe, you know, maybe the most crystalline sociopathic, not to mention criminal moment in a hearing that was chock-full of them," Litman said.

"All right, give us the other five, Harry," Wallace said.

"They already knew about the two ones we've been talking about, which are messing with the proceeding and defrauding the U.S. But I have now: he destroys U.S. property; I think seditious conspiracy is now in play, and that's very, very serious; inciting a riot is now in play and that's very, very serious; assaulting a Secret Service officer," he said. "But the two big-ticket items that are now very much in the DOJ's can: seditious conspiracy; incitement of a riot," Litman said. "Because as I say, it's now clear that he wants the force to occur, and that brings the two most serious charges down on his head, potentially."

Watch the segment below:

[Rick Plant]

Top takeaways From Jan. 6 ‘Surprise Witness’ Cassidy Hutchinson’s Testimony

Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, is the star witness of Tuesday’s surprise hearing from the Jan. 6th Committee. NBC News Reporter Julie Tsirkin, former FBI Senior Official Chuck Rosenberg and NBC News Contributor Carol Leonning dive into how Hutchinson is the “connective tissue” into learning what the former president did on Jan. 6th.

Watch:

[Rick Plant]

Cassidy Hutchinson testifies some White House aides were worried about legal implications of Jan. 6

Cassidy Hutchinson, an aide to former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, testified that there was concern in the White House about the implications of going to the Capital on Jan. 6 as the insurrection was underway. Hutchinson spoke to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on June 28 as they presented its findings to the public.

Hutchinson said former White House counsel Pat Cipollone, mentioned to her that he had “serious legal concerns.”

“In the days leading up to the sixth, we had conversations about obstructing justice or defrauding the electoral count,” she said.

The hearing was unexpectedly announced a week after the Jan. 6 committee said they were taking a break until the month of July. In the year since its creation, the committee has conducted more than 1,000 interviews, seeking critical information and documents from people witness to, or involved in, the violence that day.

Watch:

[Rick Plant]

WATCH: 25th Amendment fears helped persuade Trump to make Jan. 7 speech, aide says

Cassidy Hutchinson, former aide for Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, testified on June 28 that former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had reached out to Meadows to say that Cabinet secretaries behind the scenes were discussing invoking the 25th Amendment to remove President Donald Trump from office. Hutchinson said Pompeo also expressed concern for Meadows' “positioning with this.”

In a public hearing before the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack, Hutchinson also shared details about efforts to persuade Trump to speak out the next day and what the president wanted and didn’t want in the remarks -- including wanting to avoid talking about prosecuting the rioters or calling them violent.

Trump spoke on Jan. 7 at the urging of some of his advisers, including his daughter Ivanka Trump, her husband Jared Kushner and White House counsel Pat Cipollone, she said. They argued that his previous statement on Jan. 6 was not strong enough, that his legacy was being damaged and that the 25th Amendment could be used to unseat him from power.

“‘Think about what might happen in the final 15 days of your presidency. If we don't do this, there's already talks about invoking the 25th Amendment. You need this as cover’,” Hutchinson recalled their thinking in an earlier deposition.

She also testified that Trump wanted to include language in that speech about pardoning those who took part in the attack, an idea that she said Meadows encouraged but that the White House counsel’s office disagreed with. According to Hutchinson, both Giuliani and Meadows suggested or sought presidential pardons for themselves, as well.

The hearing was unexpectedly announced a week after the Jan. 6 committee said they were taking a break until the month of July. In the year since its creation, the committee has conducted more than 1,000 interviews, seeking critical information and documents from people witness to, or involved in, the violence that day.

[Joe Elliott]

Trump wasn’t much of a strong man. If Putin wanted to march on Red Square, do you think his security could have stopped him?

Hitler managed to lead in person his insurrection at Munich. Mussolini managed to lead in person his insurrection onto Rome. But, maybe deep down, Trump really wanted to watch from the White House.