From
The Guardian this potentially criminal part of the January 6 House
Select Committee’s investigation into Trump’s actual involvement in that
horrible event – that story headline:
“Capitol panel to investigate Trump call to
Willard hotel in hours before attack”
Also from Salon.com basically the same details.
My Introductory Question: Did Trump Know about the “Loophole” that The Guardian
writes about below? I wanted to put that question right up front with my
opinion about his excuse now to withhold phone records of that horrible day:
“The Guardian reported that Trump made several calls the day before the Capitol attack from both the White House residence, his preferred place to work, as well as the Oval Office (West Wing). It is still not certain from which location he phoned his top lieutenants at the Willard on that fateful day. That distinction is significant as phone calls placed from the White House residence, even from a landline desk phone, are not automatically memorialized in records sent to the National Archives after the end of an administration. That means even if the select committee succeeds in its litigation to pry free Trump’s call detail records from the National Archives, without testimony from people with knowledge of what was said, House investigators might only learn the target and time of the calls.”
My Opinion as I said: Did Trump know about that loophole? I’d have to say, yes, he probably did and that would be his excuse to not provide the requested phone records.
This could end up similar
to the erased 18.5 minutes in the Nixon-era Watergate tapes. Then we
may never know what Trump said that day or with whom in his calls to the
Willard, and therefore, the truth may never be known for decades.
The Main Story from
Here: Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS), Chairman of the House select
committee investigating the Capitol attack, told The Guardian that the
committee will open an inquiry into Trump’s phone call seeking to stop Joe
Biden’s certification from taking place on 6 January just hours before the
insurrection.
The chairman said the select committee intended to
scrutinize the phone call – revealed last month by the Guardian – should they
prevail in their legal effort to obtain Trump White House records over his sustained objections of executive privilege.
Thompson when asked by the Guardian whether the select
committee would look into Trump’s phone call, and suggested House investigators
had already started to consider ways to investigate Trump’s demand that Biden
not be certified as president on 6 January, responded: “That’s right.”
Thompson said the select committee could not ask the
National Archives for records about specific calls, but noted: “If we say we
want all White House calls made on January 5 and 6, if he made it on a White
House phone, then obviously we would look at it there.”
The Guardian reported last month that Trump, according to
multiple sources, called lieutenants based at the Willard hotel in Washington
D.C. from the White House in the late hours of January 5 and sought ways to stop
Biden’s certification from taking place on January 6 (the very next day).
Trump first told the lieutenants that his vice-president, Mike Pence, was reluctant to go along with the plan to commandeer his ceremonial role at the joint session of Congress in a way that would allow Trump to retain the presidency for a second term.
As Trump relayed the Pence situation he also pressed
his lieutenants about how to stop Biden’s certification from taking place on 6
January in a scheme to get alternate slates of electors for Trump sent to
Congress.
Trump’s remarks were a part of his wider discussions with
those lieutenants at the Willard to his team led by Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani,
John Eastman, and Boris Epshteyn, as well as with his former strategist Steve
Bannon also about delaying the certification.
House investigators in recent months have pursued an initial
inquiry into Trump’s contacts with lieutenants at the Willard, issuing a flurry of subpoenas compelling documents and
testimony to crucial witnesses, including Bannon and Eastman.
But Thompson said that the select committee would now also
investigate both the contents of Trump’s phone calls to the Willard and the
White House’s potential involvement, in a move certain to intensify the
pressure on the former president’s inner circle.
Thompson said of the select committee’s demands for records
from the Trump White House and Trump aides: “If we get the information that we
requested, then those calls potentially will be reflected to the Willard hotel
and whomever.”
A spokesperson for the select committee declined to comment about what else such a line of inquiry might involve. But a subpoena to Giuliani, the lead Trump lawyer at the Willard, is understood to be in the offing, according to a source familiar with the matter.
The Guardian reported that the night before the Capitol attack,
Trump called the lawyers and non-lawyers at the Willard separately, because
Giuliani did not want to have non-lawyers participate on sensitive calls and
jeopardize any of attorney-client privilege claims.
However, it was not clear whether Giuliani might invoke
attorney-client privilege as a way to escape cooperating with the investigation
in the event of a subpoena.
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), a member of the select committee, noted that protection does not confer broad immunity saying: “The attorney-client privilege does not operate to shield participants in a crime from an investigation into a crime. If it did, then all you would have to do to rob a bank is bring a lawyer with you, and be asking for advice along the way.”
My 2 Cents: This is really an important aspect of this still on-going January 6 inquiry since it now focuses more in on Trump.
And, yes, he is the true “ring-leader” make no mistake about
that, and the proverbial walls are closing in on him. The above story is kind
of like the icing the cake before lighting the candles.
Trump in my view is going
down hard and rightly so. This is after all an American presidential history first seeing a sitting president direct and incite an insurrection of the nation
just to stay in office after losing the 2020 bonafide election.
I see no way out for
Trump. Jail time surely is the only solution to help set the country back on
some sort of a normal track. Stay tuned as more on this story will surely be forthcoming, and hopefully very soon, too.
Thanks for stopping by.
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