Month: June 2022

This morning, I made some lists of the people involved with the planning and execution of J6 and that got me thinking.

By J6, I mean the entire, comprehensive plot in 2020 and early 2021 to install Donald Trump as an American dictator in the manner of Orban or Putin. As far as we know, based on information discussed during the Jan 6 hearings, this enormous plot entailed the following, at the very least:

• Subverting multiple elections
• Subverting investigations
• Subverting the courts
• Subverting state and federal legislatures
• Massive and relentless propaganda and misinformation campaigns
• Subverting law enforcement
• Subverting the military
• Mob-style one-on-one confrontations intended to intimidate
• Murderous violence

As incredible as it sounds, the hearings strongly suggest that none of this was haphazard or unintended. It was all planned. If one piece of the plan didn’t work, there were multiple fall backs. They were planning for all contingencies.

The hearings further suggest that something like six or seven core plotters developed the overarching strategic plan for J6 with Trump. An additional six or seven men (they were all men) were “read in” to most or all of the conspiracy. They provided operational/logistical support, and possibly contributed additional strategic ideas. A wider circle of about ten people was involved on a need-to-know basis for segments of the plan. These were men (and perhaps a few women) who, for example, directly planned and ordered the one-on-one intimidation; they had no reason to know what anyone else was doing).

Additionally, the core strategy depended upon countless mid-level bureaucrats and lackeys who would look away even though they suspected something “very, very bad” was afoot. Many of these “I-see-nothings” were simply protecting themselves from criminal exposure. Others likely needed persuasion to look away.

And then, there were the foot soldiers. These were the people who were sent out to directly intimidate people in person, collect videos (like the one from Fulton County), analyze the electoral counts, plant stories in the media and online — and also wield AR-15s, pepper spray, plastic ties, and spears.

This is a lot of people. It includes roughly twelve to fifteen in the inner circles, perhaps fifty to a hundred in each of the wider need-to-know circles, and also an uncountable number of useful idiots. And that brings up a question:

Who paid for it all?

I think that many of us assumed — if we thought about it at all — that the people involved in J6 participated for free, out of misguided fervor for Trump. But a little bit of reflection exposes this as a naive assumption. Fanatics need to pay bills like everyone else, after all. So it makes sense that at least some of the high-level planners of the murderous insurrection on January 6 were likely well-compensated. And at least some of those underpaid bureaucrats who looked away may have been remunerated for their willful blindness (i.e., bribed to keep their mouths shut).

Most low-level January 6 insurrectionists were pathetic dupes, of course, but some knew exactly what they were doing. And they required funding for transportation, housing, food, weapons, computers, couriers, war rooms, signs, communications technologies, accounting, banking, and planning. Funding was also required to support the non-violent foot soldiers sent out to collect videos, data information, and dirt on poll workers. Where did the dollars come from?

I think many people believe that the violent part of the J6 plot was funded by individuals themselves or through dozens of small donations and that the plans for a non-violent “legal” coup were executed by pro bono lawyers (with Trump possibly paying for some of that himself). While these financial streams surely contributed, I think J6 was so expensive and so carefully co-ordinated that I really doubt that at the core levels of the strategy the funding of this gigantic scheme was left to the vagaries of grass-roots fundraising and the whims of a billionaire with a reputation for stiffing everyone.

It is my sincere hope that the Committee and Justice will, as they say, follow the money. This was an incredibly costly endeavor; uncovering how it was funded will go a long way towards understanding how on earth it happened — and how to plan for the inevitable future coup attempts.

There’s some important context to the story about Trump trying to grab the wheel that day:

Here is our conversation with @CarolLeonnig , who literally wrote the book on the Secret Service, about the questions surrounding Cassidy Hutchinson's recounting of the story of Donald Trump lunging for the steering wheel when he found out he wasn't going to the Capitol. pic.twitter.com/LYB8zGdvtp

— Maddow Blog (@MaddowBlog) June 29, 2022

There are three possible explanations for what happened.

1. Cassidy Hutchinson is a fabulist who made that weird story up out of whole cloth for no apparent reason
2. Ornato and Engel embellished the story they related to Hutchinson that day
3. It happened

Considering what we know about Ornato and Engel from Carol Leonnig, They are Trumpers, both of them and Hutchinson was too so they had no reason to make him look worse than he was to her.

I pick door number 3.

In the public hearings so far, the House Select Committee on January 6 has marshaled facts in fastidious detail showing that former President Trump’s attempted coup was plotted and organized by the president himself with the help of his chosen accomplices and enabled by Cabinet members, aides and staffers who knew it was wrong but said nothing. The first four hearings made it clear that Trump and his henchmen knew the election had not been stolen and yet they insisted to his followers that it had been. They launched spurious lawsuits, pressured election officials, tried to corrupt the Department of Justice and strong-armed Vice President Mike Pence all in an attempt to overturn the election. But we hadn’t heard any direct testimony — until yesterday — that Trump was aware in advance that Jan. 6 could turn violent but incited the mob anyway. Now we know that he even knew that day that many in the crowd were armed. Thanks to Cassidy Hutchinson.

The former Trump White House aide and assistant to Chief of Staff Mark Meadows gave extended live testimony on Tuesday about the tumultuous days leading up to Jan. 6 and on the day itself. There were colorful anecdotes about the president throwing his lunch against the wall when he heard that former Attorney General Bill Barr had told the press there was no vote fraud and a somnolent Meadows telling a frantic White House Counsel Pat Cipollone that Trump didn’t want to stop the riot because Pence deserved it. Her testimony that she was told Trump had tried to grab the wheel of the presidential SUV and force the driver to take him to the Capitol after his speech on the 6th has dominated the media, however, mainly because a source has disputed her account so that gives them a juicy “he said/she said” storyline.

But those stories are not particularly relevant to the meat of Hutchinson’s testimony, which addressed the stunning fact that just as people had begged Trump not to continue trying to overturn the election once the court challenges had come to the end of the line and tried to stop him from listening to daft conspiracy theories, people were once again trying to stop him from executing his final plot to overturn the election by personally leading his mob up to the Capitol to stop the vote count. As Amanda Marcotte wrote in Salon, “Trump’s minions saved him from himself.” Cipollone made the point most clearly, telling Hutchinson: “We’re going to get charged with every crime imaginable if we make that movement happen.”

Trump said in his speech that he would “be there with you,” but there was a question as to whether he really meant it or if he was just saying it to inspire them to do it. According to Hutchinson, this was very much a discussion in the White House for days leading up to Jan. 6. Trump was adamant about going up to the Capitol himself. It is unclear what he planned to do once he arrived, but there was a hint offered in Hutchinson’s testimony about a conversation she had with Rudy Giuliani on January 2 after a meeting between him and Meadows:

As Mr. Giuliani and I were walking to his vehicles that evening, he looked at me and said something to the effect of, Cass, are you excited for the 6th? It’s going to be a great day. I remember looking at him saying, Rudy, could you explain what’s happening on the 6th? He had responded something to the effect of, we’re going to the Capitol.

It’s going to be great. The President’s going to be there. He’s going to look powerful. He’s — he’s going to be with the members. He’s going to be with the Senators. Talk to the chief about it, talk to the chief about it. He knows about it.

Later Hutchinson testified there had been talk that Trump might give another speech or would go into the House chamber, all of which suggest some kind of putsch in which Trump saw himself marching into Congress uninvited (which a president is not supposed to do because it is a co-equal branch of government) and doing something dramatic like running into the Senate chamber and seizing the dais or personally handing the “alternate elector” votes to Pence and ordering him to count them. Whatever he had in mind, he expected to have a riotous mob backing him up.

Hutchinson said that after that discussion with Giuliani she went back into the White House and asked Meadows about it and he dolefully replied as he doom scrolled through his phone, “There’s a lot going on, Cass, but I don’t know. Things might get real, real bad on January 6.”

The White House had been receiving a flurry of information from a variety of government sources during those first days of January that there was a serious threat of violence. On the 3rd they received a specific threat assessment that showed the Proud Boys were planning for violence on the 6th but were targeting Congress instead of counter-protesters. Hutchinson couldn’t say that she’d ever heard any specific discussions about their involvement in the rally and planned march but she did recall hearing the words Proud Boys and Oath Keepers when “Giuliani was around.”

On the night of January 5, Hutchinson testified that Trump ordered Meadows to call his henchmen Roger Stone and Michael Flynn who had set up a “war room” at the Willard Hotel with Giuliani, John Eastman, Steve Bannon and others. (Stone was careful not to be with them in the suite at the Willard but he did meet with a member of the Oath Keepers who has since pleased guilty, just hours before the insurrection.) Meadows also planned to go to the Willard personally for a meeting but was talked into calling in instead. We don’t know what they talked about on these calls but it is a direct link between Trump and the plotters at the Willard who had ties to Proud Boys and Oath Keepers who have been charged by the Department of Justice with seditious conspiracy.

Just as Trump was preparing to give his big speech the next day he was told that people in the crowd were armed and dangerous and that many were refusing to come through the metal detectors and were instead gathering outside the perimeter. Trump told the Secret Service they wouldn’t hurt him, and demanded that the metal detectors be removed. Likewise, when Meadows was informed of the same thing, he said “all right, anything else?” Neither one of them seemed surprised to learn this and neither one showed even the slightest concern. If one didn’t know better, one might just think they knew in advance that there would be armed demonstrators in that crowd.

Remember what Mark Meadows told Cassidy Hutchinson back on January 2 after meeting with Rudy Giuliani. “There’s a lot going on, Cass, but I don’t know. Things might get real, real bad on January 6th.”

They knew.

That was the plan. 

No quick fixes

Michelle Goldberg explores whether the left might learn something from the success of the decades-long anti-abortion movement in overturning Roe. Women’s rights activists may be taking the wrong lessons from the most violent and confrontational tactics of anti-abortion activists (emphasis mine):

Besides being immoral, these tactics suggest a misunderstanding of how the anti-abortion movement got to this point. Anti-abortion terrorism has been correlated with greater support for abortion rights, harming the political campaign to reverse Roe. That campaign prevailed because of a movement that spent decades mastering the nuts and bolts of American politics, persisting despite years of failure and disappointment.

This doesn’t just mean “vote harder.” It means contesting every level of power, all the time, including local elections, judicial selections and administrative rule-making. It means drawing people into a community that will make continuous struggle seem rewarding rather than depleting.

In effect, as Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez told women outside the Supreme Court on Friday, “This is a generational fight. This is not instant gratification.”

The Achiles heel of much organizing on the left is to give mutual high-fives after a victory then to go home and return to paddling or rock concerts or whatever. There is a boom-and-bust cycle to much organizing on the left that is self-defeating. Zealots on the right never go home.

Journalist Meaghan Winter, author of “All Politics Is Local: Why Progressives Must Fight for the States” (2019), told an interviewer, “The Democratic party also will build up these giant presidential, or sometimes Senate, races. And then, the moment the election’s over, win or lose, they pack up and fold up and go home.”

“So the idea being the left — Democrats, progressives all of those people — need to build long-term institutions, long-term organizations. And that can only happen, one, if we all show up long-term, and two, if … the donors are willing to fund organizing groups on the ground all of the time. And if we transition from these short-term bursts of interest in electoral work right before the election.”

In another 2019 interview, Winter said:

“The best thing people can do is commit to year-round organizing around issues — showing up going to council meetings going to the legislature working on campaigns for state candidates and city council candidates where you can make a huge difference just by showing up. Because these campaigns are run on a shoestring and you can really help. And if by changing, by showing up constantly, you may not win that year, but you change the cultural narrative, and you change what’s acceptable and you show people that things are possible. And that it’s not just these crazy Democrats who live in New York or California. You kind of destigmatize some of the messaging because you’re neighbors, and you can talk in a way that is more resonant to people who live near you than someone coming through the TV screen.”

Time after time, we hang up our spurs after the cattle drive instead of immediately setting to work on the next. Turning short-term activism into long-term, consistent effort without burnout is a trick the broader left seems unable to master.

It is why, although it’s mostly organizing around election administration, not issues, for all its frustrations, working inside the Democratic Party at the local/state level holds occasional rewards. Yes, many progressive friends do not want to get their nice, white vinyl souls contaminated with party contact. But once you prove yourself an ally, someone known for helping candidates get elected, access and influence increases.

Working here every morning, I get the best of both worlds. I can throw rocks from the outside while working on the inside. Working inside, politicos higher up the food chain start caring if you’re heaving rocks online. Even so, these days it’s hard not to burn out.

Goldberg concludes:

Abortion opponents have shoved us into a nightmare world of surveillance, coercion and medical desperation. They’ve also shown us the arduous path out of it.

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Request a copy of For The Win, 4th Edition, my free, countywide get-out-the-vote planning guide for county committees at ForTheWin.us.
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Americans in name only

Facts don’t matter until they bite.

Former Mark Meadows aide Cassidy Hutchinson testified Tuesday before an unscheduled hearing of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection. Her backstory from inside Donald Trump’s West Wing on Jan. 6 set off a flurry of fact-checking and character assassination by Trump supporters and the culprit himself.

Gunsplainers turned to Beast-splaining. Republicans dismissed her testimony (rewatch it here) as hearsay that would not stand cross-examination, etc. Any discrepancy to knock down Hutchinson’s devastating narrative of criming and dereliction of duty in the White House.

Lost in the she-said, they-said is the utter moral rot at the center of Trump world and the Republican Party Trump’s undead spirit inhabits. During the Watergate affair, John Dean declared there was a cancer on the Nixon presidency. Cassidy Hutchinson revealed the Party of Trump as a shambling corpse bereft of moral impulse, driven only by a gnawing hunger for retaining power.

The White House knew some among the mob Trump had summoned to the Ellipse that morning — Proud Boys and Oath Keepers — had come armed. Rifles, pistols, tasers, knives, spears, bear spray. Trump was fine with that. He would direct an armed mob to the Capitol anyway. He was desperate to be there to egg on the assault.

Hutchinson’s testimony tied then-Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani to the coup plotters scheming at the Willard Hotel.

Meadows knew by Jan. 2 that violence was possible, telling Hutchinson “things might get real, real bad” on Jan. 6. Hutchinson talked him out of joining plotters at Willard “war room” meeting on Jan. 5. But he phoned in, she testified.

During Trump’s speech the next day, Meadows sat on his phone inside his vehicle for 20-25 minutes speaking with someone as the Capitol assault was already underway. He later sat in his office scrolling through his phone, Hutchinson testified. As Capitol and Metro police battled rioters calling for the vice president to be hung, and as Republicans at the Capitol and conservative media stars texted for him to get Trump to call off the mob, he did nothing.

Nor did Trump for hours.

Disgraced former National Security Advisor Gen. Michael Flynn invoked his Fifth Amendment rights when asked under oath whether he thought the violence was justified, morally or legally. The retired general would not answer even if he believed in the peaceful transfer of power in America.

“Why We Did It A Travelogue from the Republican Road to Hell” is former Republican operative Tim Miller’s account of how “they all encouraged the madness that has overtaken the party. The Trumpification of the American right was the inevitable result of a series of decisions made by people like Tim Miller over the past decade.”

Cassidy Hutchinson made some of those same decisions. As did virtually the entire Republican Party before and after Trump. They are making them even now. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is angling to be Trump 2.0, hoping to take the country to an even lower level of hell. Hutchinson is at least trying to climb out.

Trump, his enablers, and his supporters will contest the details of Hutchinson’s testimony. They will try to distract from the broader narrative that Trumpism is an extremist political faction that has not simply lost its way. These undead have lost their souls. Members violated their oaths and ignored their duty while wrapped in a flag whose meaning they repudiated in word, in deed, and in spirit.

Americans in name only.

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Request a copy of For The Win, 4th Edition, my free, countywide get-out-the-vote planning guide for county committees at ForTheWin.us.
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That time when Trump tried to choke his Secret Service agent

Video of Trump leaving in his Chevy Suburban.https://t.co/C1FvzxsT30

— Andy Kaczynski (@KFILE) June 28, 2022

In case you were wondering, the committee has spoken with the Secret Service agent Trump tried to choke in the presidential SUV on January 6th. I have a sneaking suspicion that they would not have featured Hutchinson’t story today if he had not corroborated it:

The Jan. 6 select committee has interviewed the top Secret Service agent on then-President Donald Trump’s protective detail during the Capitol attack, according to three people familiar with the probe.

Robert Engel was the special agent in charge on Jan. 6, 2021, meaning he was responsible for protecting the president from “socks on to socks off” — the whole work day. In that role, he rode from the White House to that day’s “Stop the Steal” rally with Trump in the presidential armored car called “The Beast.”

Engel was also backstage at the rally and close to the then-president throughout the day as violence unfolded when thousands of pro-Trump rally participants marched to the Capitol to try to disrupt congressional certification of the 2020 election.

Because of that work, Engel has detailed insight on a key select committee focus: how the Secret Service handled the day’s chaos.

A Secret Service spokesperson said the agency has cooperated fully with the committee probe.

“Every single member of the Secret Service who was requested by the committee has been provided to them,” said Anthony Guglielmi, the agency’s communications chief. “We fully support and are cooperating with the committee’s work. Employees, documentation, whatever is requested by the committee, we have cooperated with.”

A Jan. 6 select panel spokesperson declined to comment.

Secret Service agents generally feel deep discomfort when fielding investigators’ questions about their protectees. That’s because they can’t protect those people without significant trust in the relationship. And the prospect of investigators demanding closely held details about those protectees can generate concerns.

Jeffrey Robinson, who co-authored a book with a former Secret Service agent about that agent’s work, said in an interview that investigators’ interviews with Secret Service agents can potentially create “a violation of the trust that has to be built up between the protectors and the protectee.” But, he added, the committee’s move still makes sense.

“It would be negligent if they didn’t, and also Pence’s detail,” Robinson said. “They have to. These are direct witnesses.”

Engel was closely involved in talks about whether or not Trump himself could go to the Capitol after the rally. In the days leading up to the “Stop the Steal” rally, according to a Secret Service official, White House staff asked Tony Ornato — then temporarily working as White House deputy chief of staff — if it would be feasible for the president to travel from the Ellipse to the Capitol building. Ornato referred the staff to Engel, who was one of the top Secret Service agents responsible for Trump’s safety.

Ultimately, Trump famously said during the Jan. 6 rally that he planned to go to the Capitol. “[W]e are going to — we are going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue, I love Pennsylvania Avenue, and we are going to the Capitol.”

After making that remark, Secret Service personnel reached out to other law enforcement partners to figure out if this move was feasible, a detail first reported by the Washington Post. Engel himself, meanwhile, conveyed to the relevant parties that transporting Trump to the Capitol would be unfeasible.

Guglielmi, the Secret Service spokesperson, said agency personnel inquired into the feasibility of transporting Trump to the Capitol after he made his rally remarks. But the agency never made “an operational plan” to do so, he added.

Trump himself told The Washington Post in April that his Secret Service detail blocked him from going to the Capitol.

“Secret Service said I couldn’t go,” he told the paper. “I would have gone there in a minute.”

Engel isn’t the only Secret Service employee to speak with committee investigators. Two people who spoke with POLITICO about Engel’s interview said the panel has interviewed multiple agency personnel, in sessions that have taken hours. Some of those interviewed have been called back in for repeat questioning.

It’s possible that the committee didn’t know about Hutchinson’s testimony when they spoke with Engel but again, I doubt they would have thrown that explosive testimony out there if it wasn’t corroborated. I suspect we’re going to find out.

By the way, he was in the SUV not the limousine:

Lauren Boebert says, “the church is supposed to direct the government”

There have always been ignorant fringe dwellers involved in American politics. But they have never had as power as they do now:

Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), who faces a primary election Tuesday, says she is “tired” of the U.S. separation of church and state, a long-standing concept stemming only from a “stinking letter” penned by one of the Founding Fathers.

Speaking at a religious service Sunday in Colorado, she told worshipers: “The church is supposed to direct the government. The government is not supposed to direct the church. That is not how our Founding Fathers intended it.”

She added: “I’m tired of this separation of church and state junk that’s not in the Constitution. It was in a stinking letter, and it means nothing like what they say it does.” Her comments were first reported by the Denver Post.

The Constitution’s First Amendment, which states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” has been widely interpreted to mean the separation of church and state — although the phrase is not explicitly used.

Gwen Calais-Haase, a political scientist at Harvard University, told The Washington Post that Boebert’s interpretation of the Constitution was “false, misleading and dangerous.”

Calais-Haase said she was “extremely worried about the environment of misinformation that extremist politicians take advantage of for their own gains.”

The conservative Christians have always believed this. But it’s still startling to hear a US Congresswoman say it out loud.

A patriot

I’ll be writing more about Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony but as James Fallows tweeted:

https://twitter.com/JamesFallows/status/1541843740452655108

It was absolutely riveting and revelatory. But my first thoughts are that while the details about his behavior on January 6th are extremely interesting I think it’s the testimony about what they were doing before January 6th to be the most important.

They planned for violence. Clearly, if we thought they saw it as Plan C — now we know for sure. They did:

In her deposition, Hutchinson said that DNI John Ratcliffe was concerned in the weeks leading up to Jan 6 that trying to fight the results of the election would be bad for Trump's legacy pic.twitter.com/kmgdXweOim

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 28, 2022

Hutchinson testified during her deposition that the national security adviser wanted to meet with Meadows to talk about intel that things could get bad on January 6 pic.twitter.com/NUG0H09UHS

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 28, 2022

The rest of the planning stuff is coming in the later hearings, I have no doubt. Trump, Giuliani and Meadows were all in on it.

All you have to do to know that Hutchinson’s testimony landed hard, is look at Trump’s reaction:

Ok…

Paul Krugman is exactly right:

…because G.O.P. extremism is fed by resentment against the very things that, as I see it, truly make America great — our diversity, our tolerance for difference — it cannot be appeased or compromised with. It can only be defeated.

I hear a lot from friends that we need to reach out and talk to rightwingers, that we can convince them, persuade them. But, as Krugman says, extremists can’t be mollified. And compromising is preposterous when the retort is: “If your father makes you pregnant at 13, you’re still carrying a baby.” I see no way to compromise with that statement, no way to appease the person saying it. And I see no reason to engage with them. But I do think it makes sense to do whatever I can to make sure that person is never, ever close to a position of political or cultural influence.

And this points to the necessity of effective, evidence-based tactics. What they are — beyond voting, running for office, or aspiring to become a judge — is mostly beyond my skill set. And while, I certainly don’t believe for a second that trying to persuade Trumpists to think rationally or compassionately is remotely worth the effort, I would certainly suggest that we work on our rhetoric. I mean, are you still calling anti-abortion activists “pro-life???” Seriously, folks, these are crazy coat-hanger-fetishizing nihilists. Agreeing to call them “pro-anything” is just gross.

BTW, one thing Krugman is wrong about in the column:

OK, the modern G.O.P. isn’t as bad as the second K.K.K.

Really? How easily we forget the deaths and the confederate flag in the Capitol on Jan 6; state-sanctioned torture; Trump’s violent brown-shirts cracking heads on George Floyd protestors; the use of the MOAB in Afghanistan; and the systematic murder of abortion doctors — only the last wasn’t publicly sanctioned by elected Republicans (with the stress on “publicly”). And back in the day, the KKK merely succeeded in controlling “several states,” as Krugman put it. The extremist GOP controls not only far more states than the KKK could ever lay claim to but also controls the Supreme Court and is once again about to take over the US Congress (unless Democrats change their tactics, stat).

Sorry, Dr. Krugman, but somewhere, in some hell realm, the Grand Wizards of the KKK are chortling wildly and exchanging white power OKs.

It appears there’s more there there

To be honest, I didn’t think this would add up to much but perhaps I’m wrong:

The House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack is closely focused on phone calls and conversations among Donald Trump’s children and top aides captured by a documentary film-maker weeks before the 2020 election, say sources familiar with the matter.

The calls among Trump’s children and top aides took place at an invitation-only event at the Trump International hotel in Washington that took place the night of the first presidential debate on 29 September 2020, the sources said.

The select committee is interested in the calls, the sources said, since the footage is understood to show the former president’s children, including Donald Jr and Eric Trump, privately discussing strategies about the election at a crucial time in the presidential campaign.

House investigators first learned about the event, hosted by the Trump campaign, and the existence of the footage through British film-maker Alex Holder, who testified about what he and his crew recorded during a two-hour interview last week, the sources said.

The film-maker testified that he had recorded around seven hours of one-to-one interviews with Trump, then-vice president Mike Pence, Trump’s adult children and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, the sources said, as well as around 110 hours of footage from the campaign.

But one part of Holder’s testimony that particularly piqued the interest of the members of the select committee and chief investigative counsel Tim Heaphy was when he disclosed that he had managed to record discussions at the 29 September event.

The select committee is closely focused on the footage of the event – in addition to the content of the one-on-one interviews with Trump and Ivanka – because the discussions about strategies mirror similar conversations at that time by top Trump advisors.

On the night of the first presidential debate, Trump’s top former strategist Steve Bannon said in an interview with The Circus on Showtime that the outcome of the election would be decided at the state level and eventually at the congressional certification on January 6.

“They’re going to try and overturn this election with uncertified votes,” Bannon said. Asked how he expects the election to end, Bannon said: “Right before noon on the 20th, in a vote in the House, Trump will win the presidency.”

The select committee believes that ideas such as Bannon’s were communicated to advisers to Donald Jr and his fiancee, Kimberly Guilfoyle, even before the 2020 election had taken place, the sources said – leading House investigators to want to review the Trump hotel footage.

What appears to interest the panel is whether Trump and his children had planned to somehow stop the certification of the election on January 6 – a potential violation of federal law – and to force a contingent election if Trump lost as early as September.

The event was not open to the public, Holder is said to have testified, and the documentary film-maker was waved into the Trump hotel by Eric Trump. At some point after Holder caught the calls on tape, he is said to have been asked to leave by Donald Jr.

Among the conversations captured on film was Eric Trump on the phone to an unidentified person saying, according to one source familiar: “Hopefully you’re voting in Florida as opposed to the other state you’ve mentioned.”

The phone call – a clip of which was reviewed by the Guardian – was one of several by some of the people closest to Trump that Holder memorialized in his film, titled Unprecedented, which is due to be released in a three-part series later this year on Discovery+.

Holder also testified to the select committee, the sources said, about the content of the interviews. Holder interviewed Trump in early December 2020 at the White House, and then twice a few months after the Capitol attack both at Mar-a-Lago and his Bedminster golf club in New Jersey.

The select committee found Holder’s testimony and material more explosive than they had expected, the sources said. 

I wonder if they have footage of the family plotting to contest the election regardless of the facts? I think it’s obvious that was Trump’s plan all along. He telegraphed his intentions back in 2016 when he said he would only accept the results of the election if he won.

It could be nothing but I’m intrigued.