From the original verse in the June 5 edition of the Wide World of News, almost a month ago:
For 1/6 hearings, Cassidy Hutchinson you’ll know.
Forget Ivanka and Jared, Cass’s the star of the show.
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Don’t take Joy Reid’s word for it; listen to former Trump acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney:
You can also take Heather Cox Richardson’s word for it, in which she makes a case that will almost certainly be true forever, regardless of any she-said-they-said dispute about details:
What emerged from today’s explosive hearing was the story of a president and his close advisors who planned a coup, sent an armed mob to the Capitol, approved of calls to murder the vice president, and had to be forced to call the mob off. Two of the president’s closest advisors then asked for a presidential pardon.
Or you can take Dan Balz’s word for it:
Her testimony before the House select committee’s Jan. 6 investigation probably left the former president more vulnerable legally, though ultimately that will be for the Department of Justice to decide. Equally important, it threatens to further weaken him politically, despite the hold he has retained on much of the Republican Party’s base. More Republicans will be asking themselves if this is the person they want as their nominee in 2024. Taken as a whole, it was devastating in the extreme.
The president that emerged from her account was volatile, violent and vicious, single-minded in his quest to overturn an election he lost no matter what anyone told him, anxious to head to the Capitol to personally disrupt the constitutional process that would finalize his defeat, dismissive of warnings that his actions could lead to disaster and thoroughly unbothered by the prospect of sending to Congress a mob of supporters that he knew included people armed with deadly weapons….
A president who liked to describe himself as a “very stable genius” was anything but that as Ms. Hutchinson observed in those final, frenzied days of his time in office. Hers was not a description that surprised many of those who worked for Mr. Trump and had seen him up close in the preceding four years, or for that matter, many who had known him in the decades that preceded his life in politics.
….or Bret Stephens’:
But after Tuesday, the threat of a legal indictment has become very real. The president may indeed be liable for seditious conspiracy, especially if he tried, via Meadows’s calls to Roger Stone and Michael Flynn, to reach out to extremist groups….
I doubt there will be any sort of moment when the Sean Hannitys and Laura Ingrahams of the world will tell the faithful: We were wrong; we made an idol of the wrong man. But there may be a quiet drifting away. In a moment like this, that might be just enough.
And/but we also need to take into account the words of at least two Secret Service agents, via Peter Alexander and everyone else:
And, as always, take into account the words of Liam Donovan:
And, again, the cautionary words of Dan Balz:
There are always caveats after the kind of testimony Hutchinson delivered Tuesday. She did not undergo cross-examination. The accounts of others whose names she invoked and who might contradict or refute her accounts have not been heard publicly, in large part because some — like former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, who was Hutchinson’s boss — have refused to cooperate fully with the committee. Trump dismissed Hutchinson as a “phony,” someone he hardly knew, though he has done that frequently with people he knows well but whose words have cut into his ego.
And, again, Mick Mulvaney:
Congress usually appears in public appearing confused, divided, and bumbling. The sliver of Congress that is the Jan. 6 Committee does not. Tuesday, in particular, they put on a dazzling and important show.
Donald Trump above all knows it.
CNN reports:
The Trump adviser, who was in a group text chat with several other Trump aides and allies as the hearing played out, said that "no one is taking this lightly."
"For the first time since the hearings started, no one is dismissing this," the adviser said….
[A] person close to Trump said he was nervous about Tuesday's hearing…
"He definitely wasn't expecting a twist like this," said the person close to Trump.
The former President and his allies are planning to cast Hutchinson as a junior aide who had little influence inside the West Wing, despite her proximity to both the then-President and his then-chief of staff. Hutchinson served in the Office of Legislative Affairs prior to becoming a top aide to Meadows and was an eyewitness to several key episodes leading up to January 6, in addition to witnessing some of Trump's real-time reactions that day.
Trump was specifically concerned about what Hutchinson could say about his state of mind and response to the rioters on January 6, said a second person close to him.
The stagecraft of Tuesday’s hearing was not done, as far as I know, by Billy Wilder.
But:
What pace.
What drama.
The plot of a lifetime brought to a TV, computer, cell phone near you, in the spirt of the best directing of all time. Followed up by the blogs of millions.
Hutchinson was compelling, coming across as a young idealist disillusioned by a party she felt had gone bad, stupid, or both before her fresh, all-seeing eyes, as she lashed out in a cold fury hidden behind an unassuming cover.
Ms. Hutchinson is no a liberal plant. She worked for Ted Cruz and Steve Scalise before connected with Mark Meadows. She is one of those killer doer aides serving the minute-by-minute nitty gritty needs of the mighty as only the allure of Washington power attracts.
And by DC standards, she is not as damn young as it might appear. For her job, she is in her prime. Still, at 25, for some she might have shown the misjudgment of a youth too precociously gifted with genuine political savvy (she demonstrated every indication of knowing completely what was at stake) by taking on the starring role of a lifetime.
Might an older, sager version of herself, some cynicism embedded, have forgone the imperative of “saving democracy,” knowing what would likely be in store for her if she tried?
Who knows?
Regardless, when offered the part, she took it.
Was she completely truthful? Did she pull off the role given to her by Billy?
It is too soon yet for Pauline Kael, let alone the Gang of 500, to weigh in with certainty.
The US Secret Service, in what could be a split between management and the troops in the field, needs to get its act together and either forcefully dispute or strongly corroborate her claim of Trump’s lunging at his driver.
This is not a Twitter thing, but an “I solemnly swear” thing.
When they have done at least that, we can then all jump in, albeit likely still prematurely, and take sides. Oddly (or, significantly), the head of Mr. Trump’s Secret Service detail at the time, Robert Engel, has apparently already previously testified before the committee.
Warning: Disputes involving the Secret Service are murky, muddy things, as Carol Leonnig will be the first and best to tell you.
Other pickings at Hutchinson’s various allegations will circle around. My hunch is none will significantly alter the impression or facts of her tour de force.
Now, let me remind my readers, a Wilder tour de force is not trial by jury. Congress’s job is politics, not justice. If Trump and his crew are guilty under the law, Merrick Garland and his posse will have to let us know.
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ESSENTIAL READING
* The New York Times, speaking of said posse:
As the Justice Department expands its criminal investigation into the efforts to keep President Donald J. Trump in office after his 2020 election loss, the critical job of pulling together some of its disparate strands has been given to an aggressive, if little-known, federal prosecutor named Thomas P. Windom….
Mr. Windom, a Harvard alumnus who graduated from the University of Virginia’s law school in 2005, comes from a well-connected political family in Alabama. His father, Stephen R. Windom, served as the state’s lieutenant governor from 1999 to 2003, after switching from the Democratic to the Republican Party.
The elder Mr. Windom, who retired from politics after a failed bid to become governor, was known for his earthy sense of humor: In 1999, he admitted to urinating in a jug while presiding over the State Senate chamber during a round-the-clock session, fearful that Democrats would replace him as presiding officer if he took a bathroom break.
His son has a similarly irreverent side, reflected in humor columns he wrote for student publications when he was younger.
In one of them, a brief essay for The Harvard Crimson that ran on Presidents’ Day in 1998, he professed to be uninterested in the front-page presidential investigation of that era, and oblivious to current events.
Desperate families of migrants from Mexico and Central America frantically sought word of their loved ones as authorities began the grim task Tuesday of identifying 51 people who died after being abandoned in a tractor-trailer without air conditioning in the sweltering Texas heat.
It was the deadliest tragedy to claim the lives of migrants smuggled across the border from Mexico.
The driver of the truck and two other people were arrested, U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas told The Associated Press.
He said the truck had passed through a Border Patrol checkpoint northeast of Laredo, Texas, on Interstate 35. He did not know if migrants were inside the truck when it cleared the checkpoint.
Investigators traced the truck’s registration to a residence in San Antonio and detained two men from Mexico for possession of weapons, according to criminal complaints filed by the U.S. attorney’s office. The complaints did not make any specific allegations related to the deaths.
Turkey agreed Tuesday to lift its opposition to Sweden and Finland joining NATO, ending an impasse that had clouded a leaders’ summit opening in Madrid amid Europe’s worst security crisis in decades, triggered by the war in Ukraine.
After urgent top-level talks with leaders of the three countries, alliance Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said that “we now have an agreement that paves the way for Finland and Sweden to join NATO.” He called it “a historic decision.”
Efforts to revive the Iranian 2015 nuclear agreement resumed Tuesday in Qatar’s capital, with U.S. and Iranian officials playing down expectations of a quick breakthrough that would open the way to a restored deal.
The talks, which are being mediated by European Union diplomats since Iran refuses to meet directly with the U.S., are the first since negotiations broke down in mid-March. The aim is to agree steps Washington and Tehran would need to take to return into compliance with the nuclear deal, which lifted most international sanctions on Iran in exchange for tight but temporary restrictions on Iran’s nuclear work.