Showing posts with label J6 Trump subpoena. Show all posts
Showing posts with label J6 Trump subpoena. Show all posts

October 24, 2022

I was wrong, no chance Trump will testify live, but perhaps J6 Committee thought he might


By Hal Brown

Trump by DonkeyHotey

I spent some time speculating in these blog posts (below) that Trump might decide he wanted to outsmart the January 6th Committee and run circles around them when he testified and have a huge national audience while he did this. Of course this was a grandiose delusion.



First it was reported that Liz Cheney said that there was no chance he'll even have an opportunity to try this.


"He’s not going to turn this into a circus," the House committee’s vice chair, Rep. Liz Cheney, said of the former president's subpoena.
Then this came out:

"The committee treats this matter with great seriousness," she said. "We are going to proceed in terms of the questioning of the former president under oath. It may take multiple days. And it will be done with a level of rigor and discipline and seriousness that it deserves."

The panel, Cheney continued, will not allow the former president to turn his testimony into "his first debate against Joe Biden and the circus and the food fight that that became."

“This is far too serious set of issues. And we’ve made clear exactly what his obligations are. And we are proceeding with, with that set out,” she added.

Cheney's office later clarified her remarks, making clear that she was not ruling out the possibility of Trump's live testimony.


So I don't know what to make of this. Was I right or was I wrong? 
I might have been right in another way.
It's possible that the January 6th Committee thought he might actually agree to live testimony and knew that he would, as Liz Cheney said, turn his appearance into a circus or at least attempt to.
Perhaps Cheney and the committee knew what to expect and decided they wouldn't give him a megaphone to air his grievances, or at least make sure there were strict rules in place if they did allow him to testify live.
Perhaps they think the optics of refusing to allow him to testify live would look bad for the committee.

October 22, 2022

Can Trump resist starring in the drama of testifying?

 

Can Trump resist starring in the drama of testifying?
By Hal Brown
Previous editions in archives >>>:




From The NY Times: In the most basic sense, any legal arguments seeking to get Mr. Trump off the hook would merely need to be weighty enough to produce two and a half months of litigation. If Republicans pick up enough seats in the midterm elections to take over the House in January, as polls suggest is likely, they are virtually certain to shut down the Jan. 6 committee, a move that would invalidate the subpoena. NY Times

 


A few words (my bold) in The New York Times subtitle ("If the ex-president turns down the drama of testifying, his legal team could mount several constitutional and procedural arguments in court") of all that I've seen, comes the closest to addressing my speculation though there's nothing about it in the article itself. 

The photo they used does suggest how much Trump likes to have the spotlight on him.


I am stuck on this subject because it seems that anybody with a public forum is saying Trump will wait out the clock hoping that the GOP takes control of the House in January and dissolves the J6 Committee.

This presupposes he doesn't want to have the ginormous megaphone which such testifying would give him as long as the Committee acceded to his demand that his appearance be televised live. I am hearing that he could end up testifying for two or three days.

Accepting the subpoena and testifying live would make must-see television for both his cult who want to see him make fools of his interrogators and those who want to see the J6 Committee members and their lawyers eviscerate him. 

He does have another option, albeit a lesser one, aside from insisting his testimony be live.

What Steve Bannon did after his trial, which wasn't televised, gives him another way to gain public attention. 

Steve Bannon is a boisterous buffoon and I doubt many hardcore Trumpers take him all that seriously. Some may even wonder why Trump allows himself to have his photo taken with him, even when it looks like he's holding his breath so as not to inhale the noxious fumes I can imagine emanating from the man who looks like he hasn't bathed in a week.
You may notice that if you do an image search for the two of them most show them a fair distance apart from each other.
Click above to enlarge


Donald Trump, to his cult, is their epideictic emperor, not that many even know the meaning of the word epideictic. 

Trump could decide that he could testify behind closed doors because he knows that he'd have the opportunity to say anything he wanted and have his remarks (or rant) televised on every station afterwards.

Bannon took only a few minutes but Trump could go on like he does at his rallies for as long as he wanted to. He knows that networks, even Fox News, have stopped broadcasting his rallies.  I am sure Trump misses this. Each network just broadcasts what they think are newsworthy snippets. 

Trump may not be willing to admit it to himself, at least not fully, but at some level I think he knows he needs to revamp his act because his performance has gotten stale to all but his most loyal cult members.

If he made a speech after testifying in private I think it would be covered, if not in its entirety, for a long time on most networks. I can see MSNBC and other stations cutting away if and when he starts repeating himself and lapses into an unhinged string of lies and grievances.

Regardless, he would be able to star in his own show without being interrupted by pesky interrogators and, like Bannon did, he'd refuse to take questions from reporters



More recent blog editions:

October 21, 2022

Will Trump comply with J6 subpoena? Don't be surprised if he does.

By Hal Brown

Archives of previous editions >>




It's hard to believe you haven't heard this news:


What we saw:
If he read HUFFPOST this is what Trump would see:


There still seems to be a presumption among those making predictions that he will defy the subpoena. I base my own prediction on an assessment of the personality of the man.

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."
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.


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.
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 however it is given. He may agree to testify in a deposition as long as it is televised live. The key is that he wants to feel that he is in control and have a huge TV audience will be the major influence on his decision. He wants a Superbowl size audience that he can brag about.

He also thinks by insisting on going live, no matter the actual venue, he will be pitching a curveball to the committee believing that they are bluffing and don't really expect him to testify.

He will be daring them to demand that however he appears be done behind closed doors. He knows that even those who aren't members of his cult will want transparency and that he can accuse them of trying to pull a fast one by keeping his testimony secret.

The massive narcissistic part, or put another way, the egomaniacal aspect of his malignant and sociopathic narcissism thinks he will be able to outwit members of the J6 Committee and their lawyers.

He thinks he can showboat his way through a hearing and he desperately wants a nationally televised megaphone.


Most recent editions:

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.




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