Report: Donald Trump Should Start Panicking - Vanity Fair

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He just suffered a massive defeat in his quest to keep the January 6 committee in the dark, and people are coming out of the woodwork to testify against him. 

By Bess Levin

November 10, 2021

During the four years that Donald Trump was in office, he and his lawyers made a regular habit of hiding behind the office of the presidency when it came to any investigations of wrongdoing on his part. Sued for defamation by writer E. Jean Carroll, whose rape accusations he claimed were a lie while simultaneously insulting her looks? According to then attorney general William Barr, Trump was acting in his official capacity as POTUS, and therefore should be defended by the Justice Department. Attempted to extort another country into digging up dirt on his political rival? He was just doing what presidents do. Suspected of committing fraud relating to hush-money payments to a porn star? In that instance, his personal attorneys boldly argued that it was unconstitutional for presidents to be investigated for any crimes whatsoever while in office, up to and including shooting a person on Fifth Avenue.

Now, obviously, Trump is no longer president, despite what he and his most insane supporters may believe. And that means he can blather on about executive privilege all he wants, and has in his attempt to stonewall the January 6 committee, but it holds about as much weight as a five-year-old or an inmate at the asylum he should’ve been checked into a long time ago saying it. That’s a position a lot of legal scholars have maintained since Team Trump began insisting Congress has no business gaining access to information detailing exactly what the ex-president was up to before, after, and during the attack on the Capitol, and on Tuesday night, a judge put it in official, devastating writing.

Per The Washington Post:

A federal judge in Washington ruled late Tuesday that hundreds of pages of Trump White House records can be turned over to a congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol despite the former president’s objections. The decision by U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan clears the way for the release of government records requested by Congress beginning Friday. Attorneys for former president Donald Trump immediately appealed and moved to bar release of the documents by the National Archives pending a ruling by the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

The House panel and the Justice Department “contend that discovering and coming to terms with the causes underlying the January 6 attack is a matter of unsurpassed public importance because such information relates to our core democratic institutions and the public’s confidence in them,” Chutkan wrote in a 39-page opinion. “The court agrees.”

In his lawsuit against the chairman of the House select committee and the head of the National Archives, Trump and his lawyers wrote that presidents require “full and frank” advice to carry out their duties, and that breaking the confidentiality of such conversations would set a dangerous precedent. Of course, in his case, many of the conversations he was having at the end of 2020 and beginning of 2021 were about overturning the results of a free and fair election, and the “Stop the Steal” rally that preceded the deadly attack on the Capitol. So it’s kind of a special situation. And then, again, there’s the matter of Joe Biden being the current president, and Trump having about as much say in the matter of what remains privileged as the Burger King mascot.

In her ruling, however, Chutkan noted that the Biden administration had approved the release of his predecessor’s White House records. There can be only one president at a time, the judge wrote, holding that Trump’s assertion of executive privilege “is outweighed by President Biden’s decision not to uphold the privilege.”

“Presidents are not kings, and Plaintiff is not President,” Chutkan said, echoing language used by fellow jurist Ketanji B. Jackson in 2019 in rejecting Trump’s request to toss out a congressional subpoena seeking testimony by his White House counsel Donald McGahn. “He [Trump] retains the right to assert that his records are privileged, but the incumbent President ‘is not constitutionally obliged to honor’ that assertion,” Chutkan wrote.

For a guy who views himself as an Emperor King and would probably have tried to install himself as president for life if he’d won a second term, that sort of smackdown has got to hurt. Possibly about as much as the fact that, according to The New York Times, people with relevant information about the events surrounding January 6 are coming out of the woodwork to testify against him.

In recent weeks, the committee has hired new investigators, pored over thousands of documents and heard privately from a stream of voluntary witnesses, from rally planners and former Trump officials to the rioters themselves. More than 150 witnesses have been interviewed, some of whom surprised investigators by proactively contacting the committee to testify, according to two people familiar with the investigation who described the confidential inquiry on the condition of anonymity.

The panel has learned details about how “Stop the Steal” rally organizers used deception to obtain permits from the Capitol Police to hold rallies near the Capitol; how Mr. Trump and White House officials coordinated with organizers of the rally whose attendees would later storm the Capitol; and how deeply Mr. Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, was involved in pushing false claims of widespread election fraud.

The Times also notes that the activities that went down at the Willard hotel “command center” have become a key focus for investigators as they ramp up their scrutiny into possible coordination between those pushing legal strategies to overturn the 2020 election and those who attacked the Capitol as Congress met to certify Biden’s win. Meanwhile:

…the Willard was only one hub of Trump activity before the Jan. 6 riot, when members of the former president’s inner circle also congregated at the nearby Trump International and other hotels to plan their bid to invalidate the election results.

[Former national security adviser Mike] Flynn was…present at the Trump International Hotel on Jan. 5 for a meeting that included about 15 people, where the discussion centered on “how to put pressure on more members of Congress to object to the Electoral College results,” according to one attendee, Charles Herbster, a Republican candidate for governor of Nebraska. Among those in attendance, according to Mr. Herbster, were Mr. Trump’s sons Eric and Donald Jr.; [Rudy] Giuliani; Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama; the Trump advisers Peter Navarro, Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie; and Mike Lindell, the MyPillow executive and conspiracy theorist.

In other words, a who’s who of top Trump allies and dangerous lunatics, the Venn diagram overlap of which is vast.

On Tuesday, the House committee subpoenaed an additional 10 people, bringing the total to 35.

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Meanwhile, at the Kyle Rittenhouse trial:

You’ll never believe it but Joe Manchin is waffling on Biden’s Build Back Better plan

Yes, that Joe Manchin! The one for whom things like this are so out of character

The Biden administration has faced unexpectedly strong political head winds by the continued rise in inflation. Polling suggests voters are frustrated over rising prices, and Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) has pointed at rising inflation as a reason to pause on some parts of the White House’s agenda.

“By all accounts, the threat posed by record inflation to the American people is not ‘transitory’ and is instead getting worse,” Manchin said in a statement on Wednesday. “From the grocery store to the gas pump, Americans know the inflation tax is real and DC can no longer ignore the economic pain Americans feel every day.”

In response, Biden said inflation woes are all the more reason to get his plan passed as soon as possible. “Inflation hurts Americans pocketbooks, and reversing this trend is a top priority for me,” Biden said.. “Going forward, it is important that Congress pass my Build Back Better plan, which is fully paid for and does not add to the debt, and will get more Americans working by reducing the cost of child care and elder care, and help directly lower costs for American families by providing more affordable health coverage and prescription drugs.”

You heard the man

Elsewhere!

Legal battle over Biden’s vax-or-test mandate for businesses is just beginning (Washington Post)

In stiffest punishment yet for a Jan. 6 defendant, N.J. man is sentenced to 41 months for assaulting D.C. police officer (Washington Post)

Sen. Burr's brother-in-law ordered to provide testimony in SEC insider trading investigation (CNN)

U.S. Inflation Likely to Get Worse, Dealing Challenge to Fed and Biden (Bloomberg)

Judge approves $626 million settlement in Flint water crisis (NBC News)

Matthew McConaughey says he needs “more information” before vaccinating his kids (NBC News)

Prince Harry says he warned Twitter CEO that a coup was about to happen a day before the Capitol riot (CNBC)

Sorry, Wall Street. You're Going to Have to Work New Year's Eve (Bloomberg)

“The infamous Spanish bishop who quit the Catholic church after falling in love with a Satanic erotic fiction writer has found a new job — exporting pig semen.” (NYP)

Venomous sharks found in London's Thames river (CNN)

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