EITHEROn Thursday the special committee of the Chamber met again. An hour earlier, Rep. Bennie Thompson announced that the committee would invite Ginni Thomas, the wife of US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, to testify. A day earlier, a federal court rejected Steve Bannon’s attempt to dismiss contempt of Congress charges.
“The court cannot conclude that the committee was invalidly constituted such that the indictment should be dismissed,” Trump-appointed Judge Carl Nichols announced. If he is convicted in an upcoming trial, Bannon, a former top Trump adviser, faces up to two years in prison.
The third committee session featured no fireworks. Rather, over the course of nearly three hours, the public repeatedly heard in the driest terms that Mike Pence lacked the authority to overturn the 2020 election result.
J Michael Luttig, a retired appellate judge appointed to the federal court by George HW Bush, Greg Jacob, the vice president’s attorney, and Eric Herschmann, a Trump White House attorney, made that reality abundantly clear.
The theory put forward by Donald Trump and invented by John Eastman, former clerk to Judge Thomas and Judge Luttig and pen pal of Ginni Thomas, was a lie. He was sewn from whole cloth to satiate the ambitions of the desperate occupant of the Oval Office and his minions.
To quote Pence’s advice, “there was no way” a sitting vice president could unilaterally decide or alter the outcome of the election in a joint session of Congress. Witnesses emphasized that to say otherwise would authorize Kamala Harris to do just that in early 2025 or give Al Gore the power to commit constitutional “mischief” in January 2001.
Eastman’s name and theories received repeated mention during the hearing. In August 2020, Eastman wrote an op-ed challenging Kamala Harris’s US citizenship and her eligibility to run for Vice President. For the record, Harris was born in Oakland, which is a huge part of America.
The Eastman-Ginni Thomas alliance loomed over the audience but received no mention on camera. Starting Monday night, a stream of stories emerged about the communications between Ms. Thomas and Eastman. Also, the New York Times reported that Eastman relayed to Kenneth Chesebro, a pro-Trump attorney, the situation inside the high court.
“So the odds are not based on legal merits but on an assessment of the judges’ spine, and I understand there is a heated fight going on,” Eastman wrote.
From the sound of things, Eastman learned of the pillow talk between the judge and his wife.
Just a few weeks ago, the right wing exploded over the leak of a draft Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v Wade and undoing constitutional protections for reproductive freedom. Now, just crickets.
“We think it is time that we, at some point, invite [Ginni Thomas] come talk to the committee,” Bennie Thompson, committee chair, saying Axis on Thursday. “It’s time we invited her to come speak,” she relayed to CNN.
Like Bannon, Eastman failed in his efforts to undermine the committee. In March, a federal court ruled that Eastman could not block the production of certain documents even though they possibly constituted a “lawyer’s work product.” Instead, the crime-fraud exception was attached, and the privilege was not applied.
“Based on the evidence, the court finds that it is more likely that President Trump and Dr. Eastman dishonestly conspired to obstruct the Joint Session of Congress on January 6, 2021,” the court opined.
During the final days of the Trump administration, Eastman sought but failed to obtain a presidential pardon. Herschmann told Eastman to find a lawyer. Fittingly, Eastman has invoked his right against self-incrimination before the committee 100 times.
Despite all this, the hearings have not convinced large sectors of the public. in snowfall, election deniers ran the table in Tuesday’s Republican primary. Further east, in Michigan, defendant Ryan Kelley is in the hunt for the party’s gubernatorial nomination.
Instead, a recent survey it shows half the country predicting that one day the United States will “stop” being a democracy. Beyond that, 49% of those surveyed responded that they were not following the hearings.
Judge Luttig repeated that the 45th president and some of his supporters were a “threat” to democracy, not only because of what happened on January 6, 2021, but because of the 2024 presidential race and what may follow.
At the moment, Trump is considering whether to announce his candidacy before the November midterm elections. Beyond that, plans for a Trump-powered robbery According to reports, it appears to be in the works.. If Mike Pence prayed on the morning of January 6, he was right.
Reference-www.theguardian.com