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MAGA world is scrambling to mitigate the damage from yesterday’s surprise bombshell testimony from former Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson. Many legal analysts believe that Hutchinson’s testimony “moved the ball significantly” and increased the likelihood that the former president will face criminal charges.
- Even some of Donald Trump’s former associates have publicly acknowledged the gravity of Hutchinson’s testimony. Trump’s former Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney said, “Things went very badly for the former president today. My guess is it will get worse from here.” Mulvaney is, of course, the same guy who publicly professed that if Trump lost in 2020 he would “concede gracefully,” so take all of his predictions with a grain of salt. As predicted, Trump’s former White House Counsel Pat Cipollone received his subpoena from the House January 6 Committee today, so Mulvaney may actually be right for once.
- A former federal prosecutor who served as head counsel in Trump’s first impeachment trial said of Hutchinson’s testimony: “Until this point, we had not seen proof that he knew about the violence…The testimony made very clear he was not only entirely aware of the threat, but wanted armed people to march to the Capitol. He was even willing to lead them.” Other legal scholars agreed that Hutchinson’s testimony made the strongest case thus far that Trump incited the violence on January 6. So what we know from yesterday remains unchanged: The former president knowingly directed an armed mob straight to the Capitol in the hopes of rallying them against former Vice President Mike Pence, which they did with gusto.
- In characteristic fashion, Trump is trying to lie his way out of it. On
Fake Twitter Truth Social he denied knowing who Cassidy Hutchinson is (classic) and called her “a total phony” (another classic). More specifically, he tried to discredit her second-hand account that he lunged at his Secret Service driver in an attempt to grab the wheel and redirect his motorcade to the Capitol on January 6, so he could lead the mob in person. This is one of Trump’s calling card deflection tactics: disputing a minor detail of an accusation as a way to invalidate the accuser and the totality of their claims. Naturally, neither Trump nor his sycophants who make up Hutchinson’s vocal detractors will testify under oath, as she did.
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For their part, Republicans made good on their promise to “counter-program” the January 6th hearings, and now we know what they had in mind: Spreading anonymous lies to gullible reporters.
- The biggest “dispute” to Hutchinson’s testimony came from Anthony Ornato, who was once Trump’s Secret Service detail chief. But what many are leaving out of that job description is that Ornato was such a hardcore loyalist that Trump, in an unprecedented move, ultimately brought him on as his deputy chief of staff. Now Ornato is back on Secret Service detail (which is its own kind of insanity) and he’s clearly organizing a spin campaign to help Trump weather these hearings.
- Another Trump loyalist we may not be hearing from after all is Ginni Thomas, who just weeks after bragging that she “couldn’t wait” to speak to the January 6 committee to “clear up misconceptions,” today said through lawyers that she would need a “better justification” to give testimony, as has been formally requested. Good luck with not being held in contempt like the rest of your treasonous pals, girlfriend!
We know Ornato and others are Trump die-hards, and liars, so why is the national media acting like their anonymous claims amount to a credible “other side of the story”? Former Trump White House Comms Director Alyssa Farah backed up Hutchinson’s testimony and pointed out, again, that Ornato was not under oath, and has a history of lying about Trump critics. When even someone with Farah’s resume has a better sense of how credibly to treat these sources than actual reporters do, something has gone very wrong.
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This week on Positively Dreadful, Brian Beutler is joined by U.S. Representative Jamie Raskin to talk about how personal loss and the insurrection changed him, and how we can still balance realism with hope today.
And on Friday, The Nation abortion access correspondent Amy Littlefield joins to discuss the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
New episodes of Positively Dreadful premiere each Friday. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.
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A recent flurry of wildly-unpopular Supreme Court rulings, along with the damning January 6 committee revelations, could easily help reshape this year’s midterm elections. But looking at the results of yesterday’s primaries, the signal is a little thin. The Colorado GOP soundly rejected candidates who backed Donald Trump’s Big Lie, with Trump critic Pam Anderson (no relation) besting indicted loyalist Tina Peters in the primary for Colorado State Secretary. One of Peters’s major allies, Rep. Ron Hanks (R-CO), also lost his primary for the state Senate seat to Republican businessman Joe O’Dea, who has repeatedly and publicly acknowledged that Joe Biden won the 2020 election (imagine that). Even in deep-red states, Republicans who voted to create a January 6 commission didn’t suffer too much at the ballot box. But on the whole, Republicans continue to nominate far-right candidates for statewide offices over more moderate ones. Illinois Republican Mary Miller, whom you may remember for calling the decision to overturn Roe a “historic victory for white life,” won her primary over another more moderate incumbent in the race for the House seat in a newly-drawn district. Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO), one of the Republican Party’s most batshit polarizing figures, defeated her more moderate primary challenger, and will head to the general in November. God help us.
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- Attorney General Letitia James (D-NY) announced that the state will file lawsuits against 10 “ghost gun” retailers who distributed tens of thousands of illegal, untraceable guns.
- Lev Parnas, a former associate of Rudy Giuliani who was implicated in the first impeachment investigation of former president Donald Trump, has been sentenced to 20 months in prison for fraud and campaign finance crimes. Rudy himself is still at large.
- NBC News producers went undercover to receive counseling at a state-funded crisis pregnancy centers (which outnumber abortion clinics 3:1 nationwide) and were given blatant medical misinformation. What a shock.
- Former Trump lawyer John Eastman has dropped the lawsuit he filed in an attempt to prevent the House January 6 Committee from obtaining his call logs.
- The Biden Administration announced it would be sending increased U.S. land, sea, and air military presence in several European countries as Russian violence against Ukraine continues.
- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi received communion at the Vatican from the top brass himself (the Pope) so take THAT! San Francisco Archbishop Cordileone.
- In another terrible SCOTUS decision (this one so historically and legally indefensible that even Justice Neil Gorsuch authored the dissent) the Supreme Court ruled that tribal lands aren’t completely sovereign jurisdictions, after all.
- Singer R. Kelly was sentenced to 30 years in prison for sexual exploitation of children, racketeering, bribery, and sex trafficking.
- Supreme Justice Stephen Breyer officially announced his retirement, which will take effect tomorrow at 12 p.m. EST, in a letter to President Biden today. Thanks for the memories (of a functioning democracy).
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Editor's Note: Due to a technical glitch, we reprinted Monday’s Be Smarter section here yesterday. Apologies! This was what it should have said:
In its latest decision further eradicating the separation of church and state, the Supreme Court ruled Monday that a former Washington state high school football coach had a right to lead team prayers on the field immediately after games. In the case Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, the coach claimed that he was acting on his own religious views, not speaking on behalf of the school, but the district said the players obviously saw their coach as an authority figure and therefore felt coerced into following his lead. The six Republican justices who comprised the majority wholly ignored decades of precedent regarding separation of church and state, but they also appear to have misrepresented key facts about the case as well. Writing for the majority, Justice Neil Gorsuch insisted that coach Joseph Kennedy lost his job after making “a quiet personal prayer” after football games. Justice Sonia Sotomayor who authored the dissent, took the unusual step of including photographic evidence along with her language, tacitly accusing Gorsuch of misconstruing the nature of the events in question and saying,
“...the record reveals that Kennedy had a longstanding practice of conducting demonstrative prayers on the 50- yard line of the football field. Kennedy consistently invited others to join his prayers and for years led student athletes in prayer at the same time and location. The Court ignores this history. The Court also ignores the severe disruption to school events caused by Kennedy’s conduct.”
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