Trump did more than nothing
ABC News has a this tantalizing Jan. 6 story this morning:
Special counsel Jack Smith’s team has uncovered previously undisclosed details about former President Donald Trump’s refusal to help stop the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol three years ago as he sat watching TV inside the White House, according to sources familiar with what Smith’s team has learned during its Jan. 6 probe.
Many of the exclusive details come from the questioning of Trump’s former deputy chief of staff, Dan Scavino, who first started working for Trump as a teenager three decades ago and is now a paid senior adviser to Trump’s reelection campaign. Scavino wouldn’t speak with the House select committee that conducted its own probe related to Jan. 6, but — after a judge overruled claims of executive privilege last year — he did speak with Smith’s team, and key portions of what he said were described to ABC News.
[…]
Sources said Scavino told Smith’s investigators that as the violence began to escalate that day, Trump “was just not interested” in doing more to stop it.
Scavino and other close advisers including “then-Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, then-White House counsel Pat Cipollone, and Cipollone’s former deputy, Pat Philbin,” had interactions with Trump as the fighting raged inside and outside the U.S. Capitol.
According to what sources said Scavino told Smith’s team, Trump was “very angry” that day — not angry at what his supporters were doing to a pillar of American democracy, but steaming that the election was allegedly stolen from him and his supporters, who were “angry on his behalf.” Scavino described it all as “very unsettling,” sources said.
Trump sat with his arms folded watching the insurrection on TV in his private dining room just off the Oval Office:
After unsuccessfully trying for up to 20 minutes to persuade Trump to release some sort of calming statement, Scavino and others walked out of the dining room, leaving Trump alone, sources said. That’s when, according to sources, Trump posted a message on his Twitter account saying that Pence “didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done.”
Trump’s aides told investigators they were shocked by the post. Aside from Trump, Scavino was the only other person with access to Trump’s Twitter account, and he was often the one actually posting messages to it, so when the message about Pence popped up, Cipollone and another White House attorney raced to find Scavino, demanding to know why he would post that in the midst of such a precarious situation, sources said.
Scavino made a point of telling prosecutors he was blindsided by Trump’s tweet. As someone accustomed to posting Trump’s tweets, Scavino testified “I didn’t do it,” according to ABC’s sources.
Marcy Wheeler questions that account at emptywheel, reminding readers it comes from “people who chose to stick around — some of whom, including Scavino, continue to stick around — knowing that if Trump ever turns on them he wouldn’t stop short of using his mob to get them killed.”
Expert 3, with “knowledge, skill, experience, training, and education beyond the ordinary lay person regarding the analysis of cellular phone data, including the use of Twitter and other applications on cell phones” will sort out for jurors “when Trump’s phone was unlocked and using Twitter on January 6.”
Wheeler asks:
Why would Pat Cipollone confront Scavino about the Tweet if “Scavino and others walked out of the dining room” — implicitly, walked out together — “leaving Trump alone”? Cipollone would only confront Scavino if he had believed that Scavino were still there with Trump, as his testimony describes he had been until just before Trump sent the Tweet.
The warrant on Twitter — which would have shown whether it is really true that Scavino was the only other person with access to Trump’s Twitter account — is not the only way Jack Smith tested this claim, knew the answer to this claim before interviewing Scavino.
The “he” in “demanding to know why he would post that” could refer to Cipollone asking Scavino about Trump, not Scavino. ABC’s account makes it unclear. It comes via “sources” and through multiple reporters. But Wheeler’s point is that the stories told remain muddy.
Marcy advises:
As you read the rest of the ABC piece, keep two things in mind. This leaked testimony concentrates on other aspects of the claims made to Jack Smith about how Twitter was used that day, such as this description of Luna’s testimony, describing that he warned Trump before the then-President sent a Tweet making him look “culpable” the day of the attack.
According to the sources, shortly before 6 p.m. on Jan. 6, Trump showed Luna a draft of a Twitter message he was thinking about posting: “These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously and viciously stripped away from great patriots. … Remember this day for forever!” it read.
The message echoed what Trump had allegedly been saying privately all day.
Sources said Luna told Trump that it made him sound “culpable” for the violence, perhaps even as if he may have somehow been involved in “directing” it, sources said.
Still, at 6:01 p.m., Trump posted the message anyway.
That testimony — that Luna warned Trump the Tweet would make him look like he was responsible for the violence — will only strengthen the extent to which this Tweet was already going to be used to prove that Trump ratified the violence, effectively showing that Trump remained in a conspiracy with those who violently attacked the Capitol even after watching them do so.
Which brings me to the second point. Multiple people who gave this testimony — and probably the person or persons who shared it with ABC — claim to believe that they witnessed that Trump almost murdered his Vice President, someone who had been just as (or in Scavino’s case, almost as) loyal as they had been.
This trial cannot get underway soon enough for me.