Impeachment lawyer explains what the Jan. 6 committee needs to reveal at Tuesday's hearing to sink Trump
On Tuesday at 1 p.m. EST, the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on Congress and attempt to overthrow the 2020 election will hold their seventh public hearing. The presentation will focus on right-wing extremists and militias that mobilized around former President Donald Trump.
Speaking to CNN ahead of the hearing, former ethics czar and impeachment lawyer Norm Eisen explained that the Dec. 18, 2020 meeting at the White House was a key point in the investigation that the committee will discuss. One of the points the committee has discussed is Trump's inaction on Jan. 6. For hours, Trump refused to do anything. It was Vice President Mike Pence who ultimately was able to get the Pentagon to move soldiers to the Capitol. Meanwhile, the mayor was begging for help from governors in Maryland and Virginia. D.C. isn't a state, so the ability to move National Guard soldiers isn't an option.
Trump's inaction can be used in a case of incitement, Eisen explained.
"That point, the start of something, is so, so critical here because, remember, a federal judge has already found that Trump likely committed crimes including conspiracy to defraud the United States. And what we're hearing, that's an easier crime to prove than incitement," he said. "And what we're hearing today is another phase of that, the story the committee has told is that he was desperate after the Electoral College. We're today going to hear about this meeting in the White House. The signal that followed on Dec. 19 to the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, the 'it will be wild' tweet. And how that culminated in the violence. So, it's part of a calculated attack that started, we've heard, from the committee and other places, and culminates in the violence."
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Among the people in the Oval Office that day were Michael Flynn, then-attorney Sidney Powell, Rudy Giuliani, former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne, Trump adviser Eric Herschmann, and staff secretary Derek Lyons.
"Any prosecution of Trump and we mustn't forget that a state prosecutor is very advanced, the D.A.in Atlanta, whatever may be going on at DOJ," Eisen continued. "Any prosecutor who is looking at this conspiracy is going to want to prove that Trump knew he had lost the election. He knew he had no basis to pursue it. So [former White House Counsel Pat] Cipollone, I expect, we'll see the tape from Cipollone today that will say that he made clear for the umpteenth time, no, you can't seize these voting machines. Indeed, this group that came in and is referred to sometimes as king crazy. I think the committee has done a pretty good job so far showing Trump knew better, and we're going to hear more about that today."
What Elliot Williams, former deputy assistant attorney general, explained is that he's searching for anyone who served as an intermediary. Were there "other people, what they knew, what they heard, what they passed on," he suggested.
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