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I think we might know…

​Specifics about former President Donald Trump’s efforts to keep secret the support from his White House for overturning his loss of the 2020 election were revealed in late-night court filings that detail more than 700 pages of handwritten notes, draft documents and daily logs his top advisers kept related to January 6.

The National Archives outlined for the first time in a sworn declaration what Trump wants to keep secret.

And the US House has told a federal court that Trump has no right to keep confidential more than 700 documents from his presidency, citing a committee’s need to reconstruct Trump’s efforts to undermine the 2020 election and his actions on January 6.

The court filings are in response to a lawsuit Trump brought nearly two weeks ago in which he is attempting to block congressional investigators from accessing hundreds of pages of records they requested from the National Archives, which inherited Trump’s presidential papers. The House presents itself as in agreement with the Biden administration, in an unusual show of inter-branch alignment, to oppose Trump.

Trump lawyer John Eastman said ‘courage and the spine’ would help Pence send election to the House in comments before January 6

The records Trump wants to keep secret include handwritten memos from his chief of staff about January 6, call logs of the then-President and former Vice President Mike Pence and White House visitor records, additional court records revealed early Saturday morning.

“In 2021, for the first time since the Civil War, the Nation did not experience a peaceful transfer of power,” the House Committee wrote. “The Select Committee has reasonably concluded that it needs the documents of the then-President who helped foment the breakdown in the rule of law. … It is difficult to imagine a more critical subject for Congressional investigation.”

Trump’s court case is a crucial and potentially historic legal fight over the authority of a former president to protect his term in office, the House’s subpoena power and the reach of executive privilege.

The secret records

Trump is trying to keep secret from the House more than 700 pages from the files of his closest advisers up to and on January 6, according to a sworn declaration from the National Archives’ B. John Laster, which the Biden administration submitted to the DC District Court on Saturday.

Those records include working papers from then-White House chief of Staff Mark Meadows, the press secretary and a White House lawyer who had notes and memos about Trump’s efforts to undermine the election.

In the Meadows documents alone, there are three handwritten notes about the events of January 6 and two pages listing briefings and telephone calls about the Electoral College certification, the archivist said.

Laster’s outline of the documents offers the first glimpse into the paperwork that would reveal goings-on inside the West Wing as Trump supporters gathered in Washington and then overran the US Capitol, disrupting the certification of the 2020 vote.

Trump is also seeking to keep secret 30 pages of his daily schedule, White House visitor logs and call records, Laster wrote. The call logs, schedules and switchboard checklists document “calls to the President and Vice President, all specifically for or encompassing January 6, 2021,” Laster said.

Those types of records could answer some of the most closely guarded facts of what happened between Trump and other high-level officials, including those under siege on Capitol Hill on January 6.

The records Trump wants to keep secret also include draft speeches, a draft proclamation honoring two police officers who died in the siege and memos and other documents about supposed election fraud and efforts to overturn Trump’s loss of the presidency.

Historic court fight

Some of the questions Trump has raised in his lawsuit have never before been decided by a court. If Trump convinces judges to put Archives’ document productions on hold as the case makes its way through appeals, the delay tactic could cripple parts of the House panel’s investigation.

Generally, the House has sought records held by the Archives that speak to plans to disrupt the electoral count in Congress, preparation for the pro-Trump rallies before and on January 6 and what Trump had learned about the soundness of voting after the election.

The ex-President now claims he should have the ability to assert executive privilege even when the current President will not, and that the House’s requests for records from his presidency are illegitimate.

So far, the Biden White House has declined to keep information about the Trump White House leading up to January 6 private, citing the “extraordinary” Trump-led attempt to overturn the 2020 election and the ongoing bipartisan House investigation. And the Archives — represented by Biden’s Justice Department in court — has sided with President Joe Biden’s directions.

In its own court filing overnight, the National Archives backed the House’s request for access, arguing that the attack on the Capitol is worthy of waiving executive privilege.

“President Biden’s sober determination that the public interest requires disclosure is manifestly reasonable, and his to make,” lawyers for the Biden administration wrote in court.

The Archives has said it plans to begin releasing disputed Trump-era records to the House beginning November 12, unless a court intervenes.

Judge Tanya Chutkan of the US District Court in DC will hold a key hearing on Trump’s lawsuit on Thursday.

Former members and scholars take Congress’ side

In recent days, the fight over the Trump-era National Archives documents has been heating up.

A bipartisan group of 66 former members of Congress, including some Republicans who had served in leadership posts, told a federal court earlier this week they support the US House in the case.

Their position comes in a “friend of the court” brief this week that Chutkan could look to for legal guidance.

The former members say the need for Congress to understand the January 6 attack shouldn’t be undermined by Trump, and they are urging Chutkan to reject his request for a court order that would stop the Archives from turning over documents.

“An armed attack on the United States Capitol that disrupted the peaceful transfer of presidential power — and not the document requests necessary to investigate it — is the only grave threat to the Constitution before the Court,” the former members write.

A group of government transparency organizations, law professors and other experts are also supporting the House, and the Archives turning over the Trump records, according to court filings.

The case also could play into the possible criminal prosecution of Trump ally Steve Bannon, who has defied a subpoena from the House January 6 committee by pointing to Trump’s challenge in court and the possibility the former President might try to claim communications with Bannon are protected. The House voted to hold him in contempt last week, and the Justice Department has said it is evaluating whether to prosecute him.

This is first and foremost a delaying tactic. Trump hopes that he can keep these records from the committee until its jurisdiction runs out in 2023. He may very well prevail on that. But he’s taking a chance that the high court will end up rejecting his argument that executive privilege should shield all presidents, current and former, under all circumstances. The majority is as partisan as it gets but they may also see how that could be an impediment to future harassment of democrats which they would not like.

Also, and it’s a long shot, there might be one or two right wing justices who remember the old conservative arguments about separation of powers and congressional prerogatives. I doubt it. They all seem to be utilitarians in the moment these days but you never know.

As for the substance of the documents — I’ll bet they are doozies. The White House was chaos, nobody was thinking clearly and Trump was clear that he would maintain power by any means necessary.

What’s he hiding? His and others’ role in the attempted coup and storming of the Capitol.

Veteran journalist Albert Hunt typed up a commentary for The Hill that sums up the sorry state of our democracy in about 800 words. But it’s other people’s words that do the work.

“Not too long ago,” Hunt begins, “anyone who seriously worried about the future of democracy would have been written off as a fringe figure or paranoiac.”

Not just our democracy, but others’. In Eastern Europe, Turkey, Brazil, the Philippines, and other places see authoritarianism rising, Hunt notes.

Just decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, I’d add. The end of the Cold War was thought a victory for democracy and international stability. That was then. Before the Sept. 11 attacks. Before the Great Recession. Before Americans elected a black man president and, in a backlash to that, an unstable, racist, white-nationalist con man who even now plots to overturn his election loss from November 2020.

Hunt adds the United States to the list above:

Alarmingly, democracy also is under genuine assault in the United States. This grows out of Donald Trump‘s massive attempts to overturn last November’s election outcome. This is based on his claim that he actually won the election. That has been conclusively rejected in every court test and every state recount, including those crafted by Republicans.

Yet it has become sine qua non among many major Republican politicians and most of the party’s rank and file. Egged on by Trump, they are determined to do something about it wherever they control the election machinery: throw out votes they deem flawed and/or replace local election officials. Georgia and more than a dozen other Republican-led states have moved this year to more partisan oversight of elections.

Richard Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California, Irvine, law school warns that the assault on the integrity of elections — specifically the belief they are “rigged” or unfair — “is the greatest political threat this country faces.”

Looking around the globe, Tony Blair says, “if several years ago someone raised the possibility of democracy declining, I would have replied, ‘For God’s sake, don’t worry, it’ll sort itself out.’” Now, he said on the Politics WarRoom podcast, “When people say to me ‘I think Western Democracy could be seriously disrupted and undermined,’ I’m no longer dismissive.”

In America, there is no more sober-minded historian than [Michael] Beschloss. He told me, pointedly, “American democracy is facing the most dangerous threats from within since the time of the Civil War.”

Princeton University’s Sean Wilentz, in an essay in Liberties Journal, writes of the “unsettling similarities” between the Trump-inspired Jan. 6 mob assault on the Capitol to overturn the presidential election and the events leading to the Southern secession causing the Civil War. He writes, “The secessionists committed treason by repudiating the democratic Union; but the Trump Republicans committed something akin to treason by repudiating democracy itself.” 

Earlier, more than 100 scholars of the American political system signed a statement that “our entire democracy is at risk” unless Congress thwarts these anti-democratic measures. A month ago, Robert Kagan, a leading neo-conservative, wrote that due to Trump’s contempt for the democratic process, there’s “a reasonable chance over the next three or four years of incidents of mass violence, a breakdown of federal authority, and the division of the county into red and blue enclaves.”

This isn’t just speculation.

Trump, his co-conspirators, and the Republican Party have repudiated democracy itself.

They plotted a coup, set up a war room (several, actually) and planned rallies intended to prevent certification of election results by Congress. They pressured state officials to ignore or overturn election results. They pressured the Department of Justice (unsuccessfully) to declare the election results corrupt. The Jan. 6 rallies they planned ended in a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters that led to multiple deaths and assaults resulting in injuries to nearly 150 police officers.

Even out of office, Trump’s continues to foment unrest and spread lies that the election was stolen. He retains a cult-leader’s hold both on his party and, if nothing approaching a majority, a significant percent of the electorate. With a string of election suppression measures passed in Republican-controlled states since the election, Trump loyalists (or is it royalists?) are positioning themselves for the ascension of Trump the Second.

There are apologists who say Republican voter suppression efforts are simply efforts to revert to pre-COVID election rules and that voters usually overcome these impediments. Even some Biden advisers have said the key is just to out-organize the Republicans.

You can’t overcome obstacles or out-organize if those in charge subvert the efforts. In the next close race in Georgia, the state legislators could legally decide to award the state’s presidential electors to their guy — Trump or someone like him — despite the results.

The success of the Trump phony fraud claims is seen in Ann Selzer’s Grinnell College national poll last week. More than three-quarters of Trump supporters say American democracy is under a major threat.

They are right but for the wrong reasons.

They have met the enemy and he is them.

Hunt’s focus on Trump misses a key fact. Trump is not the source of peril to our democracy. He is its expression. Trump embodies the anti-democratic sentiments of the American right that swelled like a boil for years, only to burst on Jan. 6. Only the pressures behind Trumpism have not subsided.

The Sept. 11 attacks were a gut-kick to American exceptionalism still extant after the collapse of the Soviet Union. After decades of wage stagnation, the Great Recession threw millions of Americans overboard and, as they floundered, they watched the financial elite cruise by in their yachts. The election of Barack Obama signaled a sea change in American politics that told Trumpists-to-be that they and people like them were no longer at the top of the political pyramid, or they would not be there for much longer. Thus was born the Koch-funded T-party, the “taxed enough already” movement that was never about taxes. Trump saw his opening and took it.

Trump’s deep insecurities allowed him to tap into the social and economic insecurities of his overwhelmingly white supporters. Any democracy without them firmly and permanently in charge is not worth having, their patriotic affectations notwithstanding. Democracy is in peril because for them it was always disposable. A flag-hugging strong man will do.

How many times must people shout that democracy’s on fire before people listen? Before people with the power to save it take action to save it?

Charlie Kirk, founder of the conservative student group Turning Point USA, was speaking at an “Exposing Critical Racism” event at Boise State University recently when a man from the crowd stood up to ask a question “a bit out of the ordinary.”

As in, next stop Rwanda.

Newsweek (where Kirk is a contributor) reports:

The man asked Kirk when should people start shooting those who stole the 2020 Election, pushing the so-called “Big Lie” that Donald Trump lost to Joe Biden because of widespread voter fraud. The false claims are still being peddled by Trump and his supporters, including Kirk, despite no evidence proving the election was rigged nearly one year since the vote took place.

“At this point, we’re living under a corporate and medical fascism. This is tyranny. When do we get to use the guns?” the man asked, prompting cheers and applause from the crowd.

“That’s not a joke, I’m not saying it like that. I mean, literally, where’s the line? How many elections are they going to steal before we kill these people?”

https://twitter.com/sayre26/status/1452878044931133445?s=20

Naturally, Kirk denounced the question, suggesting the man was playing into “their all their plans, and they’re trying to make you do this,” Kirk said before reinforcing the man’s paranoid fantasies of political violence.

Hill Reporter:

[Kirk] goes on to validate the question by giving a list of unrealistic actions for the state government to take, all of which amount to defying Federal mandates. He says the state should refuse Federal vaccine mandates, kick the Bureau of Land Management out of the state, and keep going:

“Idaho could now could pick and choose through the state legislature which one of the federal laws they think actually applied to the Idaho constitution…”

He also makes it clear that the reason he’s saying conservatives shouldn’t turn to violence immediately is only because that would “justify a takeover of your freedoms and liberties,” which he says is what “the other side” is waiting for.

He allows a follow-up, in which the asker just reiterates his question: “I just want to know, where’s the line?”

Kirk answers plainly:

“The line is when we exhaust every single one of our state ability to push back against what’s happening…”

So much for denouncing the question.

It may be Idaho where Kirk claims conservatives “outnumber the liberals eight to one.” But the man’s question is percolating around right-wing militias across the country, and in subdivisions, and in gun shops with bare ammunition shelves.

We have yet to hear prosecutors’ case against Oath Keepers alleged “to have stashed weapons at a hotel in Virginia as part of a so-called ‘Quick Reaction Force’ they could activate” to support protesters at the Capitol on Jan. 6. (Marcy Wheeler provided more detail on what’s known here.)

What will it take for members of Congress from both major parties to speak out against and act to quell the mass, right-wing insanity infecting the country? Where is their pushback against the blatant actions of Republican officials in state after state to neuter the power of citizens to choose their own leaders, to render democracy null and void? How many times must people shout that democracy’s on fire before people listen?

In an "Open Letter in Defense of Democracy,” over 40 former political rivals argue that Donald Trump and the Republican Party backing him are a threat to democracy. @toddgitlin and @BillKristol, co-authors of bipartisan letter, join @Lawrence to discuss. https://t.co/4XAaBgOTlH pic.twitter.com/voTElapw8W

— The Last Word (@TheLastWord) October 28, 2021

Over 50 influencers from the left and the right on Wednesday published an open letter in both The Bulwark and The New Republic asking Americans to defend the pluralism at the heart of democracy. They have no illusions about from where the threat arises:

We are writers, academics, and political activists who have long disagreed about many things.

Some of us are Democrats and others Republicans. Some identify with the left, some with the right, and some with neither. We have disagreed in the past, and we hope to be able to disagree, productively, for years to come. Because we believe in the pluralism that is at the heart of democracy.

But right now we agree on a fundamental point: We need to join together to defend liberal democracy.

Because liberal democracy itself is in serious danger. Liberal democracy depends on free and fair elections, respect for the rights of others, the rule of law, a commitment to truth and tolerance in our public discourse. All of these are now in serious danger.

The primary source of this danger is one of our two major national parties, the Republican Party, which remains under the sway of Donald Trump and Trumpist authoritarianism. Unimpeded by Trump’s defeat in 2020 and unfazed by the January 6 insurrection, Trump and his supporters actively work to exploit anxieties and prejudices, to promote reckless hostility to the truth and to Americans who disagree with them, and to discredit the very practice of free and fair elections in which winners and losers respect the peaceful transfer of power.

So we, who have differed on so much in the past—and who continue to differ on much today—have come together to say:

We vigorously oppose ongoing Republican efforts to change state election laws to limit voter participation.

We vigorously oppose ongoing Republican efforts to empower state legislatures to override duly appointed election officials and interfere with the proper certification of election results, thereby substituting their own political preferences for those expressed by citizens at the polls.

We vigorously oppose the relentless and unending promotion of unprofessional and phony “election audits” that waste public money, jeopardize public electoral data and voting machines, and generate paranoia about the legitimacy of elections.

We urge the Democratic-controlled Congress to pass effective, national legislation to protect the vote and our elections, and if necessary to override the Senate filibuster rule.

And we urge all responsible citizens who care about democracy—public officials, journalists, educators, activists, ordinary citizens—to make the defense of democracy an urgent priority now.

Now is the time for leaders in all walks of life—for citizens of all political backgrounds and persuasions—to come to the aid of the Republic.

Perhaps the signers — from William Kristol to Joan Walsh — had not seen the Kirk event video before issuing their letter or they might have added a line or two asking Republican leaders to stop disseminating disinformation, and to stop feeding conspiracy theories and civil war fantasies among their base. Even if they had seen the Kirk video, they might have thought first, as Alabama Republican Rep. Mo Brooks did on Jan. 6, about donning body armor.

Rolling Stone Sunday night posted a blockbuster report on Republican officials who helped plan the Jan. 6 protests. The report cites two unnamed sources who have been sharing information with congressional investigators on the “dozens” of planning meetings that preceded the protests. The report identifies one as a rally organizer and the other as a planner. Rolling Stone‘s Hunter Walker claims “both sources were involved in organizing the main event aimed at objecting to the electoral certification, which took place at the White House Ellipse on Jan. 6” as well as dozens of other demonstrations around the country leading up to Jan. 6:

“I remember Marjorie Taylor Greene specifically,” the organizer says. “I remember talking to probably close to a dozen other members at one point or another or their staffs.”

This is not breaking news. Greene was open about her involvement in trying to stop certification of electoral votes on Jan. 6.

Here's video of Marjorie Taylor Greene at the White House in late December 2020 saying she had a "great planning session for our January 6th objection. We aren't going to let this election be stolen by Joe Biden and the Democrats.” Expel and arrest Greene.pic.twitter.com/oogwe20Z8K

— Scott Dworkin (@funder) October 25, 2021

Which “unrelated ongoing investigation”?

But there are others named in the story and one detail in particular seems significant (highlighted):

Along with Greene, the conspiratorial pro-Trump Republican from Georgia who took office earlier this year, the pair both say the members who participated in these conversations or had top staffers join in included Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.), Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), and Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas).

“We would talk to Boebert’s team, Cawthorn’s team, Gosar’s team like back to back to back to back,” says the organizer.  

And Gosar, who has been one of the most prominent defenders of the Jan. 6 rioters, allegedly took things a step further. Both sources say he dangled the possibility of a “blanket pardon” in an unrelated ongoing investigation to encourage them to plan the protests.

“Our impression was that it was a done deal,” the organizer says, “that he’d spoken to the president about it in the Oval … in a meeting about pardons and that our names came up. They were working on submitting the paperwork and getting members of the House Freedom Caucus to sign on as a show of support.” 

Which “unrelated ongoing investigation”?

Members of Congress reportedly in touch with the White House and others about planning for the Jan. 6 insurrection:

– Marjorie Taylor Greene
– Paul Gosar
– Lauren Boebert
– Mo Brooks
– Madison Cawthorn
– Andy Biggs
– Louie Gohmert https://t.co/1QXwp4DUiW

— Tim O'Brien (@TimOBrien) October 25, 2021

Noticeable in the report is that none of the named congressional Republicans nor their spokespersons responded to requests for comment.

The organizer tells Rolling Stone:

“The reason I’m talking to the committee and the reason it’s so important is that — despite Republicans refusing to participate … this commission’s all we got as far as being able to uncover the truth about what happened at the Capitol that day,” the organizer says. “It’s clear that a lot of bad actors set out to cause chaos. … They made us all look like shit.” 

And Trump, they admit, was one of those bad actors. A representative for Trump did not respond to a request for comment.

“The breaking point for me [on Jan. 6 was when] Trump starts talking about walking to the Capitol,” the organizer says. “I was like. ‘Let’s get the fuck out of here.’ ”

The planner tells Rolling Stone, “I have no problem openly testifying.”

Former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance cautions not to get too far ahead of the ball on what this report means. It doesn’t reference plans for violence, but primarily for planning around the Trump rally that day at The Ellipse and for bringing objections before the House.

“I didn’t have Rolling Stone with 1st to report on Jan 6 witnesses on my 2021 bingo card, but proceed with caution here,” Vance tweets, “the witnesses seem to say the plan was for a vote in Congress, not violence at the Capitol. Jan 6 Comm has lots of work to do.”

“It’s one thing if Rep Gosar was dangling pardons on his own. The article doesn’t suggest it’s more than that & prosecutors would need to follow up on whether Gosar had explicit conversations with Trump or others close to him with authority,” Vance continues. “Assumptions aren’t evidence.”

Plus, “with their other legal issues and the House investigation, both of these sources have clear motivation to cooperate with investigators and turn on their former allies,” Walker writes. After all their planning ultimately resulted in a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol. So the two sources have an interest in painting themselves in the best light possible, as Walker notes. But why take their story to Rolling Stone and not to a major news outlet?

A senior staffer for a Republican member of Congress, who was also granted anonymity to discuss the ongoing investigation, similarly says they believed the events would only involve supporting objections on the House floor. The staffer says their member was engaged in planning that was “specifically and fully above board.” 

“A whole host of people let this go a totally different way,” the senior Republican staffer says. “They fucked it up for a lot of people who were planning to present evidence on the House floor. We were pissed off at everything that happened .”

Easy to say now. But the potential for violence was not easy to miss. As with any of Trump’s rally speeches, the threat of violence is always implicit, if not open.

“They knew that they weren’t there to sing ‘Kumbaya’ and, like, put up a peace sign,” the planner says of the various fringe-right paramilitary groups in town for the Jan. 6 protests. “These frickin’ people were angry.” 

They played with matches. The entire country got burned.

Business Insider has a fascinating article today interviewing 34 people who were at the capitol on January 6th. The following is just the intro:

“We have the building!” Those words sent “a wave of terror” through congressional staffer Jay Rupert as he barricaded himself in his House office on January 6 while an angry pro-Trump mob breached security and ransacked the building.

Sen. Tammy Duckworth made a split-second decision to hide alone with a staffer, fearing to use Capitol escape routes ill-designed to accommodate wheelchair users.

A Metropolitan Police Department officer described being beaten back and crushed by a mob, only to be finally knocked out by a perfectly-timed blast of bear spray. Photojournalist Alan Chin thought of his 7-year-old daughter as an angry group of Proud Boys surrounded him.

Though more than 600 people have so far been charged for their roles in the attack on the Capitol, and investigations continue, pro-Trump factions of the Republican Party continue to downplay what happened 10 months ago when Congress was supposed to certify Joe Biden as president-elect.

Insider has created a comprehensive and vivid account of the January 6 riot, compiled from interviews with 34 lawmakers, journalists, photojournalists, law-enforcement officers, Capitol Hill staff, and others. They shared the details of that day, where split-second decisions may have saved their lives.

A Metropolitan DC police officer and two custodial workers were granted anonymity to allow them to speak candidly without risking their jobs.

---

On the morning of January 6, 2021, supporters of Donald Trump, the defeated president, gather for a rally at the Ellipse, outside the White House, that starts at 11. Over on Capitol Hill, lawmakers, reporters, and a skeleton crew of staff make their way to Congress ahead of a noon session to formally certify the election results.

Rep. Jake Auchincloss, a freshman Massachusetts Democrat: I woke up, and I actually said to my roommate, another member of Congress, and I was like, “It’s going to be a good day. We took Georgia.”

Sen. Rob Portman, an Ohio Republican: I was nervous about that day already. I was concerned that something might happen, based on the information that I had.

Katherine Tully-McManus, a reporter for CQ Roll Call: I know that a friend, very early in the morning, texted me, like, “Stay safe today.” Or something. I literally texted back, “I don’t think I’m going to be fighting Proud Boys on my commute. Thanks.”

John Eastman, an attorney and Trump associate who spoke at the Ellipse: I’m working with several of the teams that have been putting together evidence — statistical, sworn affidavits — with legal teams from around the country to try and get members of Congress to object to the various certification slates as the various states came up. And then the president apparently was still on the phone with the vice president and therefore was delayed in heading over to give his speech at the rally on the Ellipse.

Rep. Gerry Connolly, a Virginia Democrat: I’m a 24-year veteran of Capitol Hill. And that is the only time I felt a sense of real personal threat and menace. But my reaction was: I’m coming. I don’t care. By God, no one’s going to stop me from being a witness to this election.

Sen. Chris Coons, a Delaware Democrat: What I do specifically remember is parking on Delaware Avenue and getting out, and seeing a handful of Trump folks with flags and signs but not looking particularly menacing, and saying, “Oh, there’s going to be a big protest today, right? Yes.” And saying, “I’m sure the Capitol Police have got this.”

Jay Rupert, deputy director of the House Periodical Press Gallery: I came in around lunchtime. And I remember my direct quote, “I work in the safest building in DC. Next to the Pentagon.”

A Metropolitan Police Department officer: There was just a standard briefing. “This is what we got coming. This is what we expect.” But we kind of knew it wasn’t going to be a regular day just from the sheer number of people. Also the day before there had been arrests of guys with guns from, like, the Proud Boys.

Sen. Tammy Duckworth, an Illinois Democrat: While things were closed off, there wasn’t a significant Capitol Police presence that would have indicated that there was going to be big problems, big trouble brewing. It seemed like we were ready. And I felt pretty secure.

Karlin Younger, a Capitol Hill resident: If you live in this neighborhood, this happens a lot. We had gone through the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and so you just kind of know when people are going to kind of show up in the neighborhood.

Rep. Ruben Gallego, an Arizona Democrat: I thought that security was way too light considering the threats that we had heard. I thought there would be more present and they would be more heavily armed.

Rep. Adam Kinzinger, an Illinois Republican: I usually don’t take my gun to work. I can, but I usually don’t, just because we have so many police. But I did take it that day.

Around noon, about a mile from Capitol Hill, Trump starts talking to thousands of supporters. He and other speakers egg the crowd on to fight for him.

That’s just the beginning. It’s actually a fascinating read to see from the perspective of all these different participants in the events that day, what they went through.

Whenever I read something like this or watch one of the documentaries I’m struck again by how outrageous and dangerous it was and how easily it could have been so much worse.

Think #January6th wasn't an attempted coup d'etat? Read this!https://t.co/tj3GqD6v6e

— Larry Sabato (@LarrySabato) October 23, 2021

They called it the “command center,” a set of rooms and suites in the posh Willard hotel a block from the White House where some of President Donald Trump’s most loyal lieutenants were working day and night with one goal in mind: overturning the results of the 2020 election.

The Jan. 6 rally on the Ellipse and the ensuing attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob would draw the world’s attention to the quest to physically block Congress from affirming Joe Biden’s victory. But the activities at the Willard that week add to an emerging picture of a less visible effort, mapped out in memos by a conservative pro-Trump legal scholar and pursued by a team of presidential advisers and lawyers seeking to pull off what they claim was a legal strategy to reinstate Trump for a second term.

They were led by Trump’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani. Former chief White House strategist Stephen K. Bannon was an occasional presence as the effort’s senior political adviser. Former New York City police commissioner Bernard Kerik was there as an investigator. Also present was John Eastman, the scholar, who outlined scenarios for denying Biden the presidency in an Oval Office meeting on Jan. 4 with Trump and Vice President Mike Pence.

They sought to make the case to Pence and ramp up pressure on him to take actions on Jan. 6 that Eastman suggested were within his powers, three people familiar with the operation said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. Their activities included finding and publicizing alleged evidence of fraud, urging members of state legislatures to challenge Biden’s victory and calling on the Trump-supporting public to press Republican officials in key states.

The effort underscores the extent to which Trump and a handful of true believers were working until the last possible moment to subvert the will of the voters, seeking to pressure Pence to delay or even block certification of the election, leveraging any possible constitutional loophole to test the boundaries of American democracy.

“I firmly believed then, as I believe now, that the vice president — as president of the Senate — had the constitutional power to send the issue back to the states for 10 days to investigate the widespread fraud and report back well in advance of Inauguration Day, January 20th,” one of those present, senior campaign aide and former White House special assistant Boris Epshteyn, told The Washington Post. “Our efforts were focused on conveying that message.”

In seeking to compel testimony from Bannon, the congressional panel investigating Jan. 6 this week cited his reported presence at the “ ‘war room’ organized at the Willard.” The House voted Thursday to hold Bannon in contempt of Congress after he refused to comply with the committee’s subpoena.

The committee has also requested documents and communications related to Eastman’s legal advice and analysis.

Eastman told The Post on Wednesday that he has not yet been contacted by the House select committee investigating the insurrection. Asked about his involvement in the Trump team’s operation at the Willard, Eastman said: “To the extent I was there, those were attorney discussions. You don’t get any comment from me on those.”

In May, Eastman indicated that he was at the hotel with Giuliani on the morning of Jan. 6. “We had a war room at the at the Willard . . . kind of coordinating all of the communications,” he told talk show host Peter Boyles, comments first reported in the newsletter Proof.

I’m pretty sure that he gave up any claims to attorney-client privilege when he gave a ridiculous interview to National Review this week:

Why is John Eastman still talking? Is Trump’s favorite coup-curious counsel under the impression that there is something he could say that would help? Because even if there was, this ain’t it.

“Call me the white-knight hero here, talking [Trump] down from the more aggressive position,” Eastman told the National Review’s John McCormack in a spectacular train wreck of an interview that ran this morning under the headline “John Eastman vs. the Eastman Memo.”

Suffice it to say, no one will be calling John Eastman a “hero” after watching him try to claim that he meant something other than exactly what he said in those two infamous memos where he argued that the Vice President has the sole authority to reject duly certified electoral college votes. And not just in the memos — the man stood next to Rudy Giuliani onstage at the January 6 rally and blessed their braying for Mike Pence to prevent Biden’s certification.

“All we are demanding of Vice President Pence is this afternoon at one o’clock he let the legislatures of the states look into this so that we get to the bottom of it and the American people know whether we have control of the direction of our government or not!” he shouted, before the crowd moved toward the Capitol to make sure that his demand was carried out.

And yet, in his discussions with McCormack, Eastman insists that these were just “internal discussion memos for the legal team,” prepared at the request of “somebody in the legal team” whose name Eastman can’t now recall, because he’s such a busy guy, yaknow.

“I was asked to kind of outline how each of those scenarios would work and then orally present my views on whether I thought they were valid or not, so that’s what those memos did,” he said.

In fact, that is not “what those memos did.” Those memos mapped out multiple strategies whereby “VP Pence opens the ballots, determines on his own which is valid, asserting that the authority to make that determination under the 12th Amendment, and the Adams and Jefferson precedents, is his alone (anything in the Electoral Count Act to the contrary is therefore unconstitutional).” Eastman had three ways to make the math work to get Biden under the magical 270 electoral vote threshold and throw the vote to the House, where Republicans could ratf*ck it.

Pence was supposed to brazen it out — “The main thing here is that Pence should do this without asking for permission – either from a vote of the joint session or from the Court.” — and hope that Republican legislators would play along with him.

“IF the Republicans in the State Delegations stand firm, the vote there is 26 states for Trump, 23 for Biden, and 1 split vote,” he wrote in the longer memo. But in the interview with McCormack, Eastman downplayed the idea as mere speculation, because Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney would never have gone along with it.

“So anybody who thinks that that’s a viable strategy is crazy,” he scoffed, ignoring the fact that he himself is the one who proposed it and apparently Trump’s people took it seriously enough to pass him along to Sen. Mike Lee.

Hilariously, Eastman first claimed that he “never had any dealings” with the Utah Republican. But when McCormack pointed out that Robert Costa and Bob Woodward had reported extensively in their book Peril on Lee’s rejection of Eastman’s scribblings — “You might as well make your case to Queen Elizabeth II. Congress can’t do this. You’re wasting your time.” — the attorney made a miraculous recovery from his amnesiac episode.

“I want to be very precise here: I said at the time I did not recall having any conversations with Mike Lee, and I certainly don’t have any record of having given him the memo,” he told McCormack. “But now that I’ve seen that quote from — I do recall that Mike Lee called me at one point. I don’t remember the subject of the conversation.”

Once the White House finally grokked that Pence wasn’t going to unilaterally toss out electoral votes on Eastman’s theory that “we’re no longer playing by Queensbury Rules,” they switched to a strategy of getting him to adjourn congress and toss the issue back to swing state legislatures for “a comprehensive audit/investigation of the election returns in their states.”

As with the plot to allow House Republicans to overturn the election, Eastman defends himself by pointing it his own incompetence, noting that “even if you had that authority, it would be foolish to exercise it in the absence of state legislatures having certified the alternate slate of electors.” It’s not a coup plot if it’s patently unworkable, right?

Except, ROLL TAPE:

Because of these illegal actions by state and local election officials (and, in some cases, judicial officials, the Trump electors in the above 6 states (plus in New Mexico) met on December 14, cast their electoral votes, and transmitted those votes to the President of the Senate (Vice President Pence). There are thus dual slates of electors from 7 states.

Eastman closed out this shitshow debacle by assuring McCormack that he’d never dream of suggesting that the Vice President has such godlike powers and that he’d give the same to Vice President Kamala Harris if she came knocking. Which is mighty … nice coming from a guy who wrote an article suggesting that Harris wasn’t even eligible to run for president because her parents were both immigrants and thus she’s not a “real” American.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but this was some extremely weak shit. It was ridiculous when the Claremont Institute tried to ride to Eastman’s rescue last week, and it’s even more pathetic now with Eastman puckered up and staring into the mirror trying to put lipstick on this pig himself.

In case you’ve forgotten, he made the case for his coup plot at the rally on January 6th:

And…

thread on Willard from “Peril”

After Pence leaves Oval on Jan. 5, Trump is furious. Pence isn’t breaking. He opens the door near the Resolute Desk. “A rush of cold air blasted the room.” He can hear the mob in the streets outside the Willard. He’s elated to hear them. (p. 230)

“As staffers filed in, some began to shiver. Still, Trump did not close the door… The noise outside grewe louder, almost like a party.

‘Isn’t that great?’ Trump exclaimed. ‘Tomorrow is going to be a big day.'” (p. 231)

“Trump went around the room, asking for advice about congressional Republicans. ‘How do we get them to do the right thing?’ he asked. No one offered an answer that satisfied him.”

Trump then calls Senator Cruz. You need to object to all the states that could be raised by the House, Trump said. Cruz says his group will object to Arizona and focus on calling for his proposed commission to probe the election. Trump is unhappy, wants more to be done. (p. 232)

With his back to the wall and Pence not budging, and Senate Rs holding to doing their own thing, Trump decides to turn to the Willard group for backup, for more aggression. He knows the mob is outside. He knows Bannon, Giuliani, Boris, Eastman, etc. are over there. (p. 232-233)

“People in the streets were yelling, delighted and almost euphoric about Trump possibly taking back the election on Wednesday. They waited to see Giuliani and other Trump stars emerge from the Willard. They nodded warmly at others in red hats, a movement in total solidarity.”

Trump decides to act, with help from Willard war room. Push Pence to brink.

“Late Tuesday evening… Trump directed his campaign to issue a statement claiming that he and Pence were in ‘total agreement that the Vice President has the power to act.’ [Marc] Short was stunned.”

“This breaks protocol,” Short said tersely.

[Jason] Miller refused to retract a word.

“The vice president has the ability to do this, he needs to be loyal,” Miller said.

Trump soon called Giuliani, and then called Steve Bannon, who was also at the Willard. (p. 234)

With Bannon, Trump brought up his meeting with Pence. There had been a power shift. “He was very arrogant,” Trump said. “Very arrogant,” Trump repeated. To Bannon and others, Trump’s four words were sobering. Pence was not going to break.

But Trump, Willard crew kept pushing…

Giuliani wonders if he should go see Pence at the Naval Observatory. A 1-on-1. Make it happen. Old school, Trump lawyer to VP. For Pence advisers, the suggestion “felt straight out of a bad mafia movie.” (p. 233)

Based on our reporting, the Willard scene on Jan. 5, 2021 and into early hours of Jan. 6, 2021 is the culmination of a pressure campaign to prevent Biden from taking office. They first tried (and failed) in the courts. Then they pushed Eastman memo/argument to VP. Relentless.

By the time Trump takes the stage on Jan. 6, he has pulled every possible lever of power to try to stay in power. Courts via Rudy. VP via Eastman. Lawmakers. DOJ. Now, all that is left to stoke, the last lever, is the sprawling crowd before him.

Originally tweeted by Robert Costa (@costareports) on October 23, 2021.

This just hit from the Washington Post this morning:

They called it the “command center,” a set of rooms and suites in the posh Willard hotel a block from the White House where some of President Donald Trump’s most loyal lieutenants were working day and night with one goal in mind: overturning the results of the 2020 election.

The Jan. 6 rally on the Ellipse and the ensuing attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob would draw the world’s attention to the quest to physically block Congress from affirming Joe Biden’s victory. But the activities at the Willard that week add to an emerging picture of a less visible effort, mapped out in memos by a conservative pro-Trump legal scholar and pursued by a team of presidential advisers and lawyers seeking to pull off what they claim was a legal strategy to reinstate Trump for a second term.

They were led by Trump’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani. Former chief White House strategist Stephen K. Bannon was an occasional presence as the effort’s senior political adviser. Former New York City police commissioner Bernard Kerik was there as an investigator. Also present was John Eastman, the scholar, who outlined scenarios for denying Biden the presidency in an Oval Office meeting on Jan. 4 with Trump and Vice President Mike Pence.

The gang was all there.

Former U.S. Attorney Joyce White Vance responds in a tweet, “The Willard isn’t cheap & this story reports the campaign paid $55K in bills for the Trump war room. This is campaign activity, not covered by executive privilege unlike the work of the presidency. The Jan 6 Comm is entitled to info about who knew/who paid”

The effort underscores the extent to which Trump and a handful of true believers were working until the last possible moment to subvert the will of the voters, seeking to pressure Pence to delay or even block certification of the election, leveraging any possible constitutional loophole to test the boundaries of American democracy.

House investigators cited the presence of the “war room” in the contempt resolution passed this week after Bannon refused to comply with a subpoena to testimony in the Jan. 6 investigation.

In May, Eastman indicated that he was at the hotel with Giuliani on the morning of Jan. 6. “We had a war room at the at the Willard . . . kind of coordinating all of the communications,” he told talk show host Peter Boyles, comments first reported in the newsletter Proof.

Giuliani’s lawyer, Robert Costello, did not respond to requests for comment.

Giuliani was likely otherwise occupied.

Breaking: Rudy Giuliani’s former associate Lev Parnas has been convicted on all counts related to his campaign finance schemes. There’s a shell of a man sweating out his hair dye right now. He knows he’s next.

— 𝐁𝐞𝐤𝐬 (@antifaoperative) October 22, 2021

Seth Abramson posted a thread on Thursday reprising his own PROOF reporting (many for subscribers only) from months ago about this second Trump war room (the first was at the Trump International Hotel in D.C.) In it, he identifies additional players present, claiming that in fact there were three war rooms at the Willard.

https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1451223849769570308?s=20

“Most folks don’t realize that the highest-traffic, most ‘celebrity’-laden war room at the Willard Hotel on January 5 wasn’t Giuliani’s—it was Alex Jones’s. Roger Stone was there. Michael Flynn was there,” Abramson tweets, citing interviews given by the talkative Stone and Jones.

All this means that the House Select Committee charged with investigating the Jan. 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol had better make haste. They’ve got a lot of people’s stories to cross-check.

David Brock has an op-ed in the NY Times in which he says that he had always underestimated Trump and even saw him as a slightly kooky but fairly typical Republican president (which I find weird — he was a shockingly bizarre president and his behavior on the world stage was beyond outrageous.)

Anyway, he’s changed his mind:

Once he was in office, I misread Mr. Trump again. Having worked inside the conservative movement for many years, I found his policies familiar: same judges, same tax policy, same deregulation of big business, same pandering to the religious right, same denial of science. Of course, there were the loopy tweets, but still I regarded Mr. Trump as only a difference of degree from what I had seen from prior Republican presidents and candidates, not a difference of kind.

When a raft of books and articles appeared warning that the United States was headed toward autocracy, I dismissed them as hyperbolic. I just didn’t see it. Under Mr. Trump, the sky didn’t fall.

My view of Mr. Trump began to shift soon after the November election, when he falsely claimed the election was rigged and refused to concede. In doing so, Mr. Trump showed himself willing to undermine confidence in the democratic process, and in time he managed to convince nearly three-quarters of his supporters that the loser was actually the winner.

Then came the Capitol Hill insurrection, and, later, proof that Mr. Trump incited it, even hiring a lawyer, John Eastman, who wrote a detailed memo that can only be described as a road map for a coup. A recent Senate investigation documented frantic efforts by Mr. Trump to bully government officials to overturn the election. And yet I worry that many Americans are still blind, as I once was, to the authoritarian impulses that now grip Mr. Trump’s party. Democrats need to step up to thwart them.

Are Democrats up for such a tough (and expensive) fight? Many liberal voters have taken a step back from politics, convinced that Mr. Trump is no longer a threat. According to research conducted for our super PAC, almost half of women in battleground states are now paying less attention to the political news.

But in reality, the last election settled very little. Mr. Trump not only appears to be preparing for a presidential campaign in 2024; he is whipping up his supporters before the 2022 midterms. And if Democrats ignore the threat he and his allies pose to democracy, their candidates will suffer next fall, imperiling any chance of meaningful reform in Congress.

Going forward, we can expect bogus claims of voter fraud, and equally bogus challenges to legitimate vote counts, to become a permanent feature of Republican political strategy. Every election Republicans lose will be contested with lies, every Democratic win delegitimized. This is poison in a democracy.

As of late September, 19 states had enacted 33 laws that will make it harder for their citizens to vote. The Republican National Committee’s “election integrity director” says the party will file lawsuits earlier and more aggressively than they did in 2020. Trump wannabe candidates like Glenn Youngkin, running for Virginia governor, are currying favor with the Republican base by promoting conspiracy theories suggesting that Virginia’s election may be rigged.

More alarmingly, Republicans in swing states are purging election officials, allowing pro-Trump partisans to sabotage vote counts. In January, an Arizona lawmaker introduced a bill that would permit Republican legislators to overrule the certification of elections that don’t go their way. In Georgia, the legislature has given partisan election boards the power to “slow down or block” election certifications. Why bother with elections?

Democrats now face an opposition that is not a normal political party, but rather a party that is willing to sacrifice democratic institutions and norms to take power.

The legislation Democrats introduced in Congress to protect our democracy against such assaults would have taken an important step toward meeting these challenges. But on Wednesday, Republicans blocked the latest version of the legislation, and given the lack of unanimity among Democrats on the filibuster, they may well have succeeded in killing the last hope for any federal voting rights legislation during this session of Congress.

Having underestimated Mr. Trump in the first place, Democrats shouldn’t underestimate what it will take to counter his malign influence now. They need a bigger, bolder campaign blueprint to save democracy that doesn’t hinge on the whims of Congress.

We should hear more directly from the White House bully pulpit about these dire threats. The Jan. 6 investigators should mount a full-court press to get the truth out. Funding voting rights litigation should be a top priority.

Where possible, Democrats should sponsor plebiscites to overturn anti-democratic laws passed by Republicans in states. They should underwrite super PACs to protect incumbent election officials being challenged by Trump loyalists, even if it means supporting reasonable Republicans. Donations should flow into key governor and secretary of state races, positions critical to election certification.

In localities, Democrats should organize poll watching. Lawyers who make phony voting claims in court should face disciplinary action in state bar associations. The financiers of the voting rights assault must be exposed and publicly shamed.

The good news is that liberals do not have to copy what the right is doing with its media apparatus — the font of falsehoods about voter fraud and a stolen election — to win over voters. Democrats can leapfrog the right with significant investments in streaming video, podcasting, newsletters and innovative content producers on growing platforms like TikTok, whose audiences dwarf those of cable news networks like Fox News.

Issues like racial justice, the environment and immigration are already resonating online with audiences Democrats need to win over, such as young people, women and people of color. Democratic donors have long overlooked efforts to fund the media, but with so much of our politics playing out on that battlefield, they can no longer afford to.

He’s right about all of that, although I remain mystified how anyone could have missed the autocratic impulses in this guy and the personality defects that would inevitably lead to an attempted coup should he lose election. The idea that he would just “cry it out” then leave and play golf was always ridiculous. He had said outright that he would never accept an election he didn’t win and laid out the argument long before anyone voted. He is psychologically unable to accept that he isn’t a massively popular super star that everyone in America reveres.

Anyway, I think Brock’s solutions are right but so far it’s hard to see the kind of energy required to get that done. I hope I’m wrong.

“Rational Republicans are losing the G.O.P. civil war,” write Miles “Anonymous” Taylor and former New Jersey governor Christine Todd Whitman (still a Republican). The only way to save the party from “pro-Trump extremists,” they believe, is for like-minded Republicans to team up with Democrats in 2022.

With much of their party in thrall to conspiracy theories and the conspirator-in-chief, they plead for a return to sanity. They have considered forming a new, center-right party, but the history of such political start-ups makes that option a last resort. What they choose in the near-term is an alliance to save America. With moderate Democrats, at least.

It’s a strategy that has worked. Mr. Trump lost re-election in large part because Republicans nationwide defected, with 7 percent who voted for Mr. Trump in 2016 flipping to support Joe Biden, a margin big enough to have made some difference in key swing states.

Even still, we don’t take this position lightly. Many of us have spent years battling the left over government’s role in society, and we will continue to have disagreements on fundamental issues like infrastructure spending, taxes and national security. Similarly, some Democrats will be wary of any pact with the political right.

But we agree on something more foundational — democracy. We cannot tolerate the continued hijacking of a major U.S. political party by those who seek to tear down our Republic’s guardrails or who are willing to put one man’s interests ahead of the country. We cannot tolerate the leaders of the G.O.P. — in 2022 or in the presidential election in 2024 — refusing to accept the results of elections or undermining the certification of those results should they lose.

To that end, 150 conservative “former governors, senators, congressmen, cabinet secretaries, and party leaders” are calling for Republicans to support a “Renew America Movement” slate of “nearly two dozen Democratic, independent and Republican candidates” in 2022. They support Democrats such as Representative Abigail Spanberger of Virginia and Elissa Slotkin of Michigan and Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona, and will defend moderate Republicans such as such as Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger targeted by Trumpists in primaries.

With the withdrawal of Craig Snyder from the GOP gubernatorial primary, they will support centrist Democrat Rep. Conor Lamb over any of the Trumpists in the race.

For Democrats, this similarly means being open to conceding that there are certain races where progressives simply cannot win and acknowledging that it makes more sense to throw their lot in with a center-right candidate who can take out a more radical conservative.

But theirs is a primary strategy, not one for the general election. To “throw their lot in with a center-right candidate” presumably asks Democrats to give “renewers” financial support or to vote for Republicans in open primaries rather than to vote in Democratic ones. Much of the political calculus for that depends on the dynamics in both major parties and the results of congressional redistricting.

Should a viable Republican from Henderson County, North Carolina challenge Rep. Madison Cawthorn in his home county, plenty of NC-11 Unafilliateds (the designation for independents in the state) would vote in the Republican primary to split the vote for a chance to knock Cawthorn out in the primary. How independents and Democrats would vote in the general is another matter. Should Cawthorn survive such a challenge, how many Republicans in the conservative district will vote for a left-of-center Democrat in the NC-11 general or for a Democrat for U.S. Senate over a Trumpist Republican? Tribalism is a tough nut.

Taylor and Whitman acknowledge that party animosities are an obstacle to their proposal.

To work, it will require trust-building between both camps, especially while fighting side-by-side in the toughest races around the country by learning to collaborate on voter outreach, sharing sensitive polling data, and synchronizing campaign messaging.

A compact between the center-right and the left may seem like an unnatural fit, but in the battle for the soul of America’s political system, we cannot retreat to our ideological corners.

We’ll see what happens after the primaries are over next year.

Donald Trump’s Iowa rally over the weekend stands out, Dean Obeidallah writes at CNN. The Republican Party has put behind the unpleasantness of Jan. 6 and slipped deeper into Trumpism. Multiple GOP pols who in January blamed Trump’s incitement for the assault on the Capitol attended the rally to make obeissance before their liege lord. Among Republicans in attendance were Iowa US Sen. Chuck Grassley, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, Iowa Reps. Mariannette Miller-Meeks and Ashley Hinson.

Obeidallah calls out Grassley:

The most hypocritical of the bunch is Sen. Grassley, who on January 6 was escorted by his security detail to a secure location to protect him from the pro-Trump mob that had laid siege on the Capitol. Grassley, who voted to certify the 2020 election, made a veiled reference to Trump in his statement, noting that the lawsuits filed after the election had failed and that “politicians in Washington should not second guess the courts once they have ruled.”

Grassley issued a statement in February calling out Trump for trying to undermine certification of election results and to dispute the determination of multiple courts. Trump “belittled and harassed elected officials across the country to get his way,” Grassley said. “He encouraged his own, loyal vice president, Mike Pence, to take extraordinary and unconstitutional actions during the Electoral College count.” Trump along with the riotersbore responsibility for the Capitol attack.

But by Saturday, all was forgiven. Grassley was there to accept Trump’s endorsement as just good politics: “If I didn’t accept the endorsement of a person that’s got 91 percent of the Republican voters in Iowa, I wouldn’t be too smart.”

Hinson too had in January issued a statement placing responsibilty on Trump for both his actions and inaction that day. She was there nonetheless on Saturday.

Obeidallah continues:

You don’t need to be a historian to recognize the danger in a political party showing blind loyalty to one person. These GOP elected officials just several months ago rightly criticized Trump and his role in the false election claims that led to the January 6 attack. With their presence at his rally this weekend, it seems they’ve now changed their tune.

“Flexibility is the first principle of politics,” Richard Nixon once told a staffer. It may be the only principle Republicans have left.

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) reflected on what has become of the Republican Party on “Face the Nation” Sunday. Host Margaret Brennan asked about the Democrats’ efforts to advance legislation without cooperation from Republicans. Doesn’t that make it appear that “Washington’s not working again”?

WATCH: @RepAdamSchiff tells @margbrennan the Republican party is an "autocratic cult around Donald Trump" and is not "interested in governing" or "maintaining the solvency of the country." pic.twitter.com/f2doChgscP

— Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) October 10, 2021

Schiff responded that the Republican Party has become “an autocratic cult around Donald Trump … not interested in governing.”

 “It’s not interested in even maintaining the solvency in the credit worthiness of the country. And we have to recognize that they’re not interested in governing. And so we’re going to govern, we’re going to have to do it. And if we have to do it with our own votes, we will do that.”

Democrats are tasked with demonstrating “that democracy delivers, that it can help people put food on the table, that it can address these huge disparities in income.” Democracy’s fragility means Democrats must not only deliver on that, but “also on voting rights and stop these efforts to disenfranchise people.”

More distressing is how the Republican Party “has made itself an anti-truth, anti-democratic cult of the former president,” Schiff said, “and the responsibility is on that party to once again become a party of ideas.”  

He is being over-generous. Schiff admits that people he once respected because he believed they believed their own rhetoric “turned out not to believe it at all. That the only thing that they cared about was the maintenance of their power or position.”

Grassley, et al. demonstrated again on Saturday that flexibility is perhaps their only principle, and power their only interest.