October 15, 2022

Will he or won't he? Part 3 on Trump testifying before J6 Committee

 Will he or won't he? Part 3 on Trump testifying before J6 Committee

By Hal Brown



Sunday Update: On MSNBC at least, the speculation as to whether he will testify is leaning toward saying he won't.

Not a link

Here are two articles about the possibility Trump will end up testifying before the January 6th Committee:

From The Guardian:


From RAWSTORY:



These articles ask whether  testifying before the January 6th Committee would be wise, and say that his lawyers are cautioning him that it may not be to his advantage to testify only to exact revenge against his enemies.

All of this may amount to nothing but a miniscule Mar-a-Lago hill of beans when it come to influencing Trump.



I still maintain that there's a reasonable chance Trump will end up testifying before the January 6th Committee despite the following reporting:

"Trump also appears to have become more aware about the pitfalls of testifying in investigations, with lawyers warning him about mounting legal issues in criminal inquiries brought by the justice department and a civil lawsuit brought by the New York state attorney’s office."
It is one thing to say that Trump is aware of "the pitfalls of testifying" and quite another to say that's he's convinced that the so-called pitfalls described by lawyers who he probably believes aren't nearly as intelligent as he is ought to be heeded.

Trump is a man who has always been guided by his own grandiose beliefs in his being the smartest person in the room. The "room" as he defines it is the country, hell, the world if not the cosmos. 

Trump is a MAGA moth drawn to the flame of fame.

He knows that if he wants to have the eyes of the nation riveted on him, whether in prime time or during the day, he will push his demand for live coverage of his testimony rather than as in typical testimony given in a deposition prior to or instead of appearing before the full committee live.

I have little doubt that if she's not the top of Trump's most despised list, Nancy Pelosi is in the top three. I assume he watched the last J6 Committee hearing (it was on Fox) so he saw the videos of her during the attack:
If anyone was watching the commentaries about this anywhere but on Fox they heard commentators talking abut how presidential she was. Trump probably thought "how dare she" get so much air time." 

He'd be raging on, in his mind if not out loud, about how he was being cheated out of TV time that was deservedly his. 

I can see him thinking about how foolish the committee was to subpoena him to appear in person. "Perhaps they're bluffing," he might think. "Well, fuck them, I'll call their bluff," he'd think as he basked in his blowhard self-behooved brilliance.

He is well aware that the committee will be hard pressed to deny his acceptance of the subpoena with what will be interpreted by many, if most, in the public as a reasonable request to simply walk into the committee room, be sworn in, and show to the nation that he is cooperating. 

Whether Trump is able to resist this remains to be seen. 

For the reasons described in my two pervious stories (links below and in side column) I wouldn't dismiss the possibility that we won't see him achieve the bragging rights to having been the star of one of the most watched television shows ever broadcast. He might think this would exceed the viewers of the moon landing in 1960 (125-150 million). 

Even if his numbers are much less (and they would be - after all he wouldn't be the first man to walk on the moon) there's a good chance if he was to testify the number of viewers would exceed the 20 million who viewed the first committee hearing and you can bet he would brag bigly about this.





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October 14, 2022

Will he or won't he testify? Don't assume he won't. Updated.

 Will he or won't he testify? Don't assume he won't.

By Hal Brown

Loyal readers will notice that I changed my illustration.

I made the above illustration prior to reading this story: 

'This is vomit': CNN host rips apart 'unhinged liar' Trump's new response to the Jan. 6 latest hearing.


I wrote the first portion of this story last night and updated it this morning. Scroll down the page for the updates.

On bottom of page is Trump's response to the subpoena, an hour later than promised. 

At the bottom of this page is actual letter Trump sent to the January 6th Committee this morning. 
Moment of Zen, click to enlarge my photo of Mt. Hood

My impression is that this may have been dictated by Trump and then edited by someone to make it more or less coherent. It is basically a rant of previously expressed outrage and lies. There's no reference to whether or not he'll testify before the committee even if they are to let him do so live. If he does actually appear under oath before the committee I expect this or something similar will be his opening statement. 

Trump is driven by emotion, not logical thinking, and his predominant emotions are part and parcel of one or another aspect of his malignant narcissism and other aspects of his psychopathology. (I wish more experts would refer to malignant narcissism as sociopathic narcissism since these two pathologies should have equal weight in considering what Trump manifests in his personality and behavior - but this should be the subject of another article. The term suggest a pathology where narcissism has metastasized but it really a combination of two disorders.)

This letter to the J6 Committee doesn't appear to have been vetted by, let alone written by lawyers. Any rational person in his position would have made sure such a letter was composed by lawyers.

Perhaps in his delusional state he believes this will cause the committee members to be so awestruck and so discombobulated that they will be rendered mute when it comes to asking him questions.

Trump's letter doesn't say anything about whether he'd be willing to testify before the January 6 Committee.

Now to the question as to whether the media is erroneously jumping to conclusions in saying it is highly doubtful Trump will testify if as he is said to have demanded that it be broadcast live...

As far as I can tell this (in my bold) is the common if not universal opinion being expressed in the media about the prospect of Donald Trump not complying with the Jan. 6 Committee subpoena and testifying:

The subpoena is not about getting former President Donald Trump to testify -- which almost certainly won't happen with 10 weeks or so left in this Congress and, in all likelihood, in the existence of the House Jan. 6 committee that voted on Thursday to issue it. (From ABC News)


Maggie Haberman of The New York Times reported, "Since it became public that the House select committee planned to subpoena Trump for his testimony, the former president has been telling aides he favors doing so, so long as he gets to do so live, according to a person familiar with his discussions."

"However, it is unclear whether the committee would accept such a demand," Haberman noted.

This doesn't surprise me. He thinks by going live without a prior deposition he will be pitching a curveball to the committee, and the narcissistic part of his malignant narcissism thinks he will be able to outwit members of the J6 Committee.

He thinks he can showboat his way through a hearing and desperately wants a nationally televised megaphone. He knows that there are no scheduled further hearing but is well aware that if the committee agrees to having him testify live they will schedule another one. He knows it will have a huge audience. Look for it being televised in prime time.

In his delusional grandiosity he doesn't think the committee will be prepared for him or will cower in his presence.

He is so very wrong.

He will be walking into a perjury trap if he lies, and if he takes the Fifth he will be announcing his guilt. If he tries this the committee should make him recite the Fifth in its entirety each time - not to tersely mutter "the Fifth" as others have done. Veiwers need to be reminded of this part: "I refuse to answer questions or provide information that might incriminate me."

So I say to Trump, bring it on.




Friday 5:00 AM PST


After the Jan. 6 committee unanimously voted in favor of subpoenaing former President Donald Trump, he’s been telling those in his orbit he’s not opposed to the idea. “The former president has been telling aides he favors doing so, so long as he gets to do so live, according to a person familiar with his discussions,” The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman reported on Thursday evening. “However, it is unclear whether the committee would accept such a demand.” Not everyone in Trump’s circle is convinced that him testifying would be a wise idea, however. “He should not,” a Trump adviser who speaks regularly with the former president told The Daily Beast on Thursday evening. A Trump spokesperson didn’t immediately return The Daily Beast’s request for comment. Taking to Truth Social, Trump said he will share his response to the subpoena Friday morning, while claiming the committee is “a giant scam, presided over by a group of Radical Left losers, and two failed Republicans.”



Trump posted this yesterday so the sis the morning Trump promised to respond to the subpoena. It's 5:08 here in Portland, Oregon, so it if Trump is true to his word here his decision should have been posted eight minutes ago... I'll post it when I find it.





This is now on Truth Social:


It links to this FoxNews story:


Excerpt below shows a major fly in the ointment also in the subtitle above and the idea that the one person who could have easily assured that the National Guard was expeditiously dispatched to the Capitol was Trump himself.

EXCLUSIVE: Former President Donald Trump "loves the idea of testifying" before the House select committee investigating January 6th, a source close to Trump told Fox News Digital just after the panel unanimously voted to subpoena him.

The source said that if Trump complied with the subpoena and testified, he would "talk about how corrupt the election was, how corrupt the committee was, and how Nancy Pelosi did not call up the National Guard that Trump strongly recommended for her to do three days earlier on January 3, 2021."

Videos taken by Nancy Pelosi's daughter Alexandra, a documentarian covering the Capitol proceedings on Jan. 6th, were shown for the first time in yesterday's hearing show Pelosi and Senator Schumer trying desperately to arrange for the National Guard to basically save members of Congress from the mob and allow the certification to continue.










The former president issued the statement an hour after his self-imposed deadline, claiming that his supporters acted "peacefully and patriotically" when they stormed the U.S. Capitol seeking to halt or delay the certification of President Joe Biden's election win. Read story.

Below is the actual letter Trump sent to the January 6th Committee this morning.

 
My impression is that this may have been dictated by Trump and then edited by someone to make it more or less coherent. It is basically a rant of previously expressed outrage and lies. There's no reference to whether or not he'll testify before the committee even if they are to let him do so live. If he does actually appear under oath before the committee I expect this or something similar will be his opening statement. 
Perhaps in his delusional state he believes this will cause the committee members to be so awestruck and so discombobulated that they will be rendered mute when it comes to asking him questions.


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DONALD J. TRUMP

October 13, 2022 “PEACEFULLY AND PATRIOTICALLY”

The Honorable Bennie G. Thompson Chairperson
The Select Committee

to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol Longworth House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515

Dear Chairman Thompson,
THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 2020 WAS RIGGED AND STOLEN!

The same group of Radical Left Democrats who utilized their Majority position in Congress to create the fiction of Russia, Russia, Russia, Impeachment Hoax #1, Impeachment Hoax #2, the $48 Million Mueller Report (which ended in No Collusion!), Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine, the atrocious and illegal Spying on my Campaign, and so much more, are the people who created this Committee of highly partisan political Hacks and Thugs whose sole function is to destroy the lives of many hard-working American Patriots, whose records in life have been unblemished until this point of attempted ruination. The double standard of the Unselects between what has taken place on the “RIGHT,” and what has taken place with Radical Left, lawless groups such as Antifa, Black Lives Matter, and others, is startling and will never be acceptable, even to those who will be writing the history of what you have done to America.

This memo is being written to express our anger, disappointment, and complaint that with all of the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on what many consider to be a Charade and Witch Hunt, and despite strong and powerful requests, you have not spent even a short moment on examining the massive Election Fraud that took place during the 2020 Presidential Election, and have targeted only those who were, as concerned American Citizens, protesting the Fraud itself. Those who committed the Fraud, thereby having created the Crime of the Century, go unblemished and untouched, but those who fought the Crime have suffered a fate that was unthinkable just a short time ago. We have a two-tier system of Justice in the United States that cannot be allowed to continue. A Majority of people in our Country say that the Presidential Election of 2020 was determinatively dishonest, including the fact that many Legislatures were overridden by local and State politicians and judges on vital regulations and requirements, which is totally illegal and UNCONSTITUTIONAL. In February 2021, Time Magazine broke the story of the shadow campaign that was launched to rig the 2020 Presidential Election. The authors write:

“‘To the President, something felt amiss. ‘It was all very, very strange,’ Trump said on Dec. 2. ‘Within days after the election, we witnessed an orchestrated effort to anoint the winner, even while many key states were still being counted.’ In a way, Trump was right. There was a conspiracy unfolding behind the scenes...”

You did not ask one question about any of this. Since 1888, no incumbent President has gained votes and lost reelection. I received many millions more votes in 2020 than I did in 2016, unheard of in our political History. When you win Ohio, Florida, and Iowa, which I did in a landslide, no President has lost the General Election since 1960. We swept all four bellwether States (Iowa, Florida, Ohio, and North Carolina) that have correctly predicted Election winners since 1896. I won 18 of the 19 bellwether counties, my coattails secured the Victories of 27 out of 27 “toss up” House races, and the Democrats did not flip a single State Legislature. Yet somehow Biden beat Obama with the Black population in select Swing State cities, but nowhere else. It is all not possible, or very likely, but should have been a major subject of your Committee’s work because it was the Election result that brought this record-breaking crowd to Washington, D.C. on January 6th.

A large percentage of American Citizens, including almost the entire Republican Party, feel that the Election was Rigged and Stolen (because they have seen the determinative evidence, some of which is attached to this letter).

No work was done by the Committee on Election Fraud. We, and a huge portion of the American people, simply asked that it be a part of your Committee’s work. It wasn’t.

In addition, the Unselect Committee has willfully ignored the fact that days before January 6, 2021, I recommended and authorized thousands of troops to be

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deployed to ensure that there was peace, safety, and security at the Capitol and throughout Washington, D.C. on January 6th because I knew, just based on instinct and what I was hearing, that the crowd coming to listen to my speech, and various others, would be a very big one, far bigger than anyone thought possible. As it turns out, it was indeed one of the largest crowds I have ever spoken before, a very wide swath stretching all the way back to the Washington Monument. The massive size of this crowd, and its meaning, has never been a subject of your Committee, nor has it been discussed by the Fake News Media that absolutely refuses to acknowledge, in any way, shape or form, the magnitude of what was taking place. In fact, for such a historic event, there are very few pictures that accurately show the event, or how many people were really there. Incredibly, it seems that pictures showing the size of the event were perhaps cancelled, scrubbed, deleted or, in any event, not available, but we still have some—as attached.

The Department of Defense timeline shows that National Guard troops could have easily been present at the Capitol before January 6th and that I fully authorized this recommendation and request. Following my authorization, the Department of Defense was surprised to receive a wholesale refusal, in writing, from D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser and the Capitol Police, who do not report to me, but report to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. The law requires their authorization before any troop deployment could be utilized in Washington, D.C.

Why the failure to act or use this ready force? Had even a small percentage of National Guard or fencing been there, there would have been no problem, January 6th would have been just another date. I did my job long ahead of schedule. Some people call it good instinct, but the troops were ready to go. Nancy Pelosi and Muriel Bowser didn’t do their job, they didn’t like the look of soldiers, and sadly your Committee refuses to say anything about it, because if they did, it would be clear that I did everything correctly, and that is not what the Committee wants to see. You stated openly that Nancy Pelosi is off limits, there will be no discussions on this subject, yet she and the Mayor were responsible for this very bad decision not to bring in the troops. The troops were ready to go, and you refuse to even discuss this subject. Why?

Despite very poor television ratings, the Unselect Committee has perpetuated a Show Trial the likes of which this Country has never seen before. There is no Due Process, no Cross-Examination, no “real” Republican members, and no legitimacy since you do not talk about Election Fraud or not calling up the troops. It is a Witch Hunt of the highest level, a continuation of what has been going on for

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years. You have not gone after the people that created the Fraud, but rather great American Patriots who questioned it, as is their Constitutional right. These people have had their lives ruined as your Committee sits back and basks in the glow.

The people of this Country will not stand for unequal justice under the law, or Liberty and Justice for some. Election Day is coming. We demand answers on the Crime of the Century.

page4image574148944

CC:

Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren Congressman Adam Schiff Congressman Pete Aguilar Congresswoman Stephanie Murphy Congressman Jamie Raskin Congresswoman Elaine Luria Congresswoman Liz Cheney Congressman Adam Kinzinger

Donald J. Trump

45th President of the United States

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APPENDIX (photos of rally crowd near Washington Monument)

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Arizona

  • Maricopa County accepted at least 20,000 mail-in ballots after Election Day 2020, including 18,000 on November 4, 2020, picked up from the U.S. Postal Service—more than the entire Election margin of 10,457 ballots.

  • A study of early ballot envelope signatures identified 229,430 mismatched signatures in Maricopa County. Officials only reported 25,000 mismatches, or 1.3%.

  • The Arizona Forensic Audit of Maricopa County identified numerous anomalies, fraud, and Election law violations that are determinative, including 17,322 duplicate absentee ballot envelopes, which surged after the Election. Between November 4th and November 9th, scores of mail-in ballot duplicates emerged. 96% of the ballots that came in on two of these days were duplicates.

  • Auditors discovered evidence that millions of files of General Election data and security logs were deleted, with purges taking place on critical days, including the day before the audit began on February 2, 2021.

  • The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors admitted they purged the system and moved Election data after they received a subpoena.

  • Another analysis by Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai in Pima County found

    significant anomalies with mail-in ballots. In precincts with anomalous high turnout (over 92%), mail-in ballots started flipping from 6% Republican for Biden to 40% of Republicans voting for Biden, which is highly suspect.

  • Two precincts in Pima had over 100 percent turnout for mail-in ballots— which is impossible—and 40 precincts had over 97% returned.

  • The audit discovered numerous State Election laws were broken in the 2020 Presidential Election, including A.R.S. 16-547, A.R.S. 16-548, A.R.S. 16-550, A.R.S. 16-551, A.R.S. 16-552, A.R.S. 16-621, A.R.S. 16 Articles 1, 1.1, and 2.

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  • 2,500 duplicated ballots created from a damaged ballot had no serial numbers, a violation of A.R.S. 16-621.

  • 1,919 mail-in ballot envelopes were missing signatures, a violation of A.R.S. 16-547.

  • Maricopa County reported 1,455 “no signatures” on mail-in ballot envelopes.

  • To this day, Maricopa County has never provided chain of custody documents for all Election equipment and ballots, in violation of A.R.S. 16-621 E.

  • At least 740,000 ballots violated chain of custody requirements in Maricopa County.

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Georgia

  • 43,907 ballots from Facebook-funded drop boxes were counted in DeKalb County that violated the chain of custody rules. Remember, Georgia was decided by 11,779 votes.

  • Poll workers were caught scanning ballots multiple times on camera in Fulton County. Ballot images confirmed at least 3,390 duplicate votes were counted for Joe Biden.

  • At least 10,300 illegally cast votes in Georgia (and up to 35,000) are from individuals who voted in the wrong county, more than necessary to “tip the 2020 results.”

  • Brad Raffensperger’s own investigator in Fulton County reported ballots were “unaccounted for.” He witnessed at least 2,800 ballots that “came in mail carts instead of black ballot bins,” violating chain of custody, and reported 1,200 ballots that were “cured” and “wheeled in through the back door” days after Election Day, when President Trump’s massive lead “shrunk as more votes continue to be tallied in Fulton County.”

  • The investigator also found “identical vote tallies repeated multiple times” that “likely resulted in about 1,000 extra votes being tallied” for Joe Biden.

  • A week after this private memo was sent to him, Brad Raffensperger falsely claimed publicly the Election results were “trustworthy” and “sound,” when he knew they were not.

  • Raffensperger was told of numerous irregularities on a video conference call with Republicans after the 2020 Election, that put “the outcome of the Election into doubt.” including an admission from an Elections Board Member in Gwinnett County that, “We have way more ballots than we have envelopes. I don’t think it was done right.”

  • Hundreds of voters were taken away from “Trump” after Election workers altered ballots that were rejected by voting machines. “Trump” votes were thrown out, while spoiled ballots were unlawfully counted for Joe Biden.

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• During the hand recount, tally sheets were falsified showing unanimous vote counts for Joe Biden, including 100-0 and 200-0 fraudulent counts.

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Michigan

  • Officials in Detroit illegally blocked Republican poll challengers’ access, covered the windows, called the police, and denied lawful challenges in order to count ballots in secret.

  • Affidavits and video evidence show thousands of ballots being delivered through a back door of the then-named TCF Center at 3:30 a.m. on Election night. The RINOs in the State Senate confirmed this also in their report analyzing the 2020 Election, and said a “large volume” of ballots were delivered to the TCF Center with no chain of custody. Those ballots came from drop boxes.

  • Matt DePerno found voting machines were subverted and accessed remotely. In Antrim County, 7,048 votes were changed in favor of Joe Biden.

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Pennsylvania

  • In Pennsylvania, as of February 2021, there were 121,240 more votes than voters. By law, Pennsylvania cannot certify an Election with this type of discrepancy.

  • A lawsuit filed in Delaware County revealed video evidence of Election officials discussing destroying Election evidence from November 2020. “It’s a felony,” one official says after talking about the need to “get rid” of voting “pads and second scanners.” Videos and sources involved in the litigation say the Delaware County officials “violated numerous Election laws and needed to hide evidence,” and that the destruction of records was “done to ensure records eventually provided actually matched the Election results that were reported in Nov. 2020.”

  • Attorney General Bill Barr ordered U.S. Attorney Bill McSwain to stand down and not investigate Election irregularities, even after McSwain reported that his office “received various allegations of voter fraud and election irregularities.”

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Wisconsin

  • In Wisconsin, nearly 200,000 voters identified as “indefinitely confined,” even though that was often not the case. They were simply using COVID as a means to skirt Voter ID laws for mail-in ballots. These ballots should have been thrown out. After the 2020 Presidential Election, a judge ruled the Democrat Governor did not have legal authority “to exempt all voters to get an absentee ballot without an ID.”

  • 44,272 people, according to the Wisconsin Legislative Audit Bureau, voted in November 2020, without ever showing Voter ID, which is more than twice the vote margin in the State.

  • The Wisconsin Election Commission ordered nursing homes to violate Election laws, leading to widespread voter fraud and 95 to 100% turnout in nursing homes—an impossibility!

  • In a powerful ruling by the Wisconsin Supreme Court, drop boxes that were used in the 2020 Election were found to be illegal. In a concurring opinion, justices stated, “If elections are conducted outside of the law, the people have not conferred their consent on the government. Such elections are unlawful and their results are illegitimate.”

    We have only covered five Swing States, this does not pertain to the rest of the Country. For example, what is being done about the “cash for votes” scheme in Nevada, where 15 out of 17 counties had more votes than voters?

    Is the Committee going to report on the million dollars the FBI wanted to pay Christopher Steele as an incentive to prove the dossier allegations and “Get Trump,” or is it going to get to the bottom of the fact that my Campaign was blatantly spied on by the Democrats, even while I was in the Oval Office, in what for anyone else would be one of the biggest scandals in political history?

    It was also recently reported that the FBI interfered in the 2020 Presidential Election by telling Facebook and the Media not to reveal anything about

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Hunter Biden’s laptop. The FBI said it was “Russian disinformation,” but knew that it wasn’t. It was a well-guarded secret that only one newspaper had the courage to report. Eight in 10 Americans believe this unprecedented collusion impacted the outcome of the 2020 Presidential Election.

In addition, True the Vote, the Nation’s leading voters’ rights organization, collected over 4 million minutes of ballot drop box video, showing ballot stuffing at a level not seen before. This is also supported by highly accurate cell phone data that tracked the same individuals going to as many as 28 different locations in one day to do this. All in all, millions of ballots were stuffed. Based on their research, True the Vote estimates as many as 7% of all mail-in ballots cast could have been ineligible—approximately 4.8 million votes, an Election-changing number many times over.

Also, why haven’t you spoken with the USPS Inspector General, and the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, about the 1.1 million mail-in ballots that they admit were deemed undeliverable, 560,814 rejected, and 14.7 million still “unable to be tracked” (as the Public Interest Legal Foundation uncovered)? Where are they?

To this day, new evidence is emerging as Patriots around the Country are uncovering systemic problems within their voter rolls. Furthermore, Republican counties across the nation, from Texas to Michigan, Arizona to Wisconsin and more, have voted to decertify and reject the 2020 Election. The most recent Rasmussen Poll on the issue found a staggering 55% think cheating likely affected the outcome, including 53% of Independents and 35% of Democrats, revealing this issue is not going away.

There are many other facts and discrepancies that we are not presenting at this time due to time constraints, but that are also Election determinative. At your request, I will present these additional numbers to you, but everything already presented would change the final Election result many times over.

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October 13, 2022

Will he or won't he testify? Don't assume he won't.

Will he or won't he testify? Don't assume he won't.

By Hal Brown

As far as I can tell this (in my bold) is the common if not universal opinion being expressed in the media about the prospect of Donald Trump not complying with the Jan. 6 Committee subpoena and testifying:

The subpoena is not about getting former President Donald Trump to testify -- which almost certainly won't happen with 10 weeks or so left in this Congress and, in all likelihood, in the existence of the House Jan. 6 committee that voted on Thursday to issue it. (From ABC News)


Updated below as news on this story breaks: 

Maggie Haberman of The New York Times reported, "Since it became public that the House select committee planned to subpoena Trump for his testimony, the former president has been telling aides he favors doing so, so long as he gets to do so live, according to a person familiar with his discussions."

"However, it is unclear whether the committee would accept such a demand," Haberman noted.

This doesn't surprise me. He thinks by going live without a prior deposition he will be pitching a curveball to the committee, and the narcissistic part of his malignant narcissism thinks he will be able to outwit members of the J6 Committee.

He thinks he can showboat his way through a hearing and desperately wants a nationally televised megaphone. He knows that there are no scheduled further hearing but is well aware that if the committee agrees to having him testify they will schedule another one. He knows it will have a huge audience. Look for it being televised in prime time.

In his delusional grandiosity he doesn't think the committee will be prepared for him or will cower in his presence.

He is so very wrong.

He will be walking into a perjury trap if he lies, and if he takes the Fifth he will be announcing his guilt. If he tries this the committee should make him recite the Fifth in its entirety each time - not to tersely mutter "the Fifth" as others have done. Veiwers need to be reminded of this part: "I refuse to answer questions or provide information that might incriminate me."

So I say to Trump, bring it on.




Friday 5:00 AM PST


After the Jan. 6 committee unanimously voted in favor of subpoenaing former President Donald Trump, he’s been telling those in his orbit he’s not opposed to the idea. “The former president has been telling aides he favors doing so, so long as he gets to do so live, according to a person familiar with his discussions,” The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman reported on Thursday evening. “However, it is unclear whether the committee would accept such a demand.” Not everyone in Trump’s circle is convinced that him testifying would be a wise idea, however. “He should not,” a Trump adviser who speaks regularly with the former president told The Daily Beast on Thursday evening. A Trump spokesperson didn’t immediately return The Daily Beast’s request for comment. Taking to Truth Social, Trump said he will share his response to the subpoena Friday morning, while claiming the committee is “a giant scam, presided over by a group of Radical Left losers, and two failed Republicans.”



Trump posted this yesterday so the sis the morning Trump promised to respond to the subpoena. It's 5:08 here in Portland, Oregon, so it if Trump is true to his word here his decision should have been posted eight minutes ago... I'll post it when I find it.





This is now on Truth Social:


It links to this FoxNews story:


Excerpt below shows a major fly in the ointment also in the subtitle above and the idea that the one person who could have easily assured that the National Guard was expeditiously dispatched to the Capitol was Trump himself.

EXCLUSIVE: Former President Donald Trump "loves the idea of testifying" before the House select committee investigating January 6th, a source close to Trump told Fox News Digital just after the panel unanimously voted to subpoena him.

The source said that if Trump complied with the subpoena and testified, he would "talk about how corrupt the election was, how corrupt the committee was, and how Nancy Pelosi did not call up the National Guard that Trump strongly recommended for her to do three days earlier on January 3, 2021."

Videos taken by Nancy Pelosi's daughter Alexandra, a documentarian covering the Capitol proceedings on Jan. 6th, were shown for the first time in yesterday's hearing show Pelosi and Senator Schumer trying desperately to arrange for the National Guard to basically saved members of Congress from the mob and allow the certification to continue.




For some MAGA manly men, Hegseth's sexual assault and drinking charges are badges of honor worthy of a medal, by Hal M. Brown

  Republicans Look Past Sexual Assault, Alcohol Allegations Against Pete Hegseth Reading this led me to react the with title of this blog an...