Jan. 6 panel probes Trump’s 187 minutes as Capitol attacked

The nearly two-hour session will add a closing chapter to the past six weeks of hearings.

(AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File) The Associated Press

By LISA MASCARO, MARY CLARE JALONICK and FARNOUSH AMIRI, Associated Press

updated on July 21, 2022 | 7:16 AM

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The House Jan. 6 committee will hold its final hearing of the summer the way the series began — vividly making the case that Donald Trump’s lies about a stolen election fueled the grisly U.S. Capitol attack, which he did nothing to stop but instead “gleefully” watched on television at the White House.

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Thursday’s prime-time hearing will dive into the 187 minutes that Trump failed to act on Jan. 6, 2021, despite pleas for help from aides, allies and even his family. The panel intends to show how the defeated president’s attempt to overturn Joe Biden’s election victory has left the United States facing enduring questions about the resiliency of its democracy.

“A profound moment of reckoning for America,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., a member of the committee.

With live testimony from two former White House aides, and excerpts from its trove of more than 1,000 interviews, the nearly two-hour session will add a closing chapter to the past six weeks of hearings that at times have captivated the nation.

Returning to prime time for the first time since the series of hearings began, the panel aims to show just how close the United States came to what one retired federal judge testifying this summer called a constitutional crisis.

The events of Jan. 6 will be outlined “minute by minute,” said the panel’s vice chair, Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo.

“You will hear that Donald Trump never picked up the phone that day to order his administration to help,” Cheney said.

“He did not call the military. His Secretary of Defense received no order. He did not call his Attorney General. He did not talk to the Department of Homeland Security,” Cheney said. “Mike Pence did all of those things; Donald Trump did not.”

Testifying Thursday will be former White House aides who had close proximity to power.

Matt Pottinger,who was deputy national security adviser, and Sarah Matthews, then press aide, both submitted their resignations on Jan. 6, 2021, after what they saw that day. Trump has dismissed the hearings on social media and regarded much of the testimony as fake.

Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., the chairman of the committee, is isolating after testing positive for COVID-19 and will attend by video. Rep. Elaine Luria, D-Va., a former Naval officer who will lead the session with Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., who flew combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, said she expects the testimony from the White House aides will “just be really compelling.”

“These are people who believed in the work they were doing, but didn’t believe in the stolen election,” Luria said.

The White House aides were not alone in calling it quits that day. The panel is expected to provide a tally of the Trump administration aides and even Cabinet members who resigned after Trump failed to call off the attack.

As the panel continues to collect evidence and prepares to issue a preliminary report of findings, it has amassed the most substantial public record to date of what led up to Americans attacking the seat of democracy.

While the committee cannot make criminal charges, the Justice Department is monitoring its work.

So far, more than 840 people have been charged with federal crimes related to the Capitol riot. Over 330 of them have pleaded guilty, mostly to misdemeanors. Of the more than 200 defendants to be sentenced, approximately 100 received terms of imprisonment.

What remains uncertain is whether Trump or the former president’s top allies will face serious charges. No former president has ever been federally prosecuted by the Justice Department.

Attorney General Merrick Garland said Wednesday that Jan. 6 is “the most wide-ranging investigation and the most important investigation that the Justice Department has ever entered into.”

“We have to get this right,” Garland said. “For people who are concerned, as I think every American should be, we have to do two things: We have to hold accountable every person who is criminally responsible for trying to overturn a legitimate election, and we must do it in a way filled with integrity and professionalism.”

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In delving into the timeline, the panel aims to show what happened between the time Trump left the stage at his “Stop the Steal” rally shortly after 1:10 p.m., after telling supporters to march to the Capitol, and some three hours later, when he issued a video address from the Rose Garden in which he told the rioters to “go home” but also praised them as “very special.”

It also expects to produce additional evidence about Trump’s confrontation with Secret Service agents who refused to drive him to the Capitol — a witness account that the security detail has disputed.

Five people died that day as Trump supporters battled the police in gory hand-to-hand combat to storm the Capitol. One officer has testified about how she was “slipping in other people’s blood” as they tried to hold back the mob. One Trump supporter was shot and killed by police.

“The president didn’t do very much but gleefully watch television during this time frame,” Kinzinger said.

Not only did Trump refuse to tell the mob to leave the Capitol, he did not call other parts of the government for backup and gave no order to deploy the National Guard, Cheney said.

This despite countless pleas from Trump’s aides and allies, including his daughter Ivanka Trump and Fox News host Sean Hannity, according to previous testimony and text messages the committee has obtained.

“You will hear that leaders on Capitol Hill begged the president for help,” Cheney has said, including House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy, who she said indicated he was “’scared’ and called multiple members of President Trump’s family after he could not persuade the President himself.”

The panel has said its investigation is ongoing and other hearings are possible. It expects to compile a preliminary report this fall, and a final report by the end of this session of Congress.

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>Jan. 6 panel probes Trump’s 187 minutes as Capitol attacked

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>Matt Pottinger,who was deputy national security adviser, and Sarah Matthews, then press aide, both submitted their resignations on Jan. 6, 2021, after what they saw that day. Trump has dismissed the hearings on social media and regarded much of the testimony as fake.

Potted Plant?

Swamp Critter?

Both?

Biography

Matthew Pottinger is Chairman of FDD’s China Program. Pottinger served the White House for four years in senior roles on the National Security Council staff, including as deputy national security advisor from 2019 to 2021. In that role, he coordinated the full spectrum of national security policy. He previously served as senior director for Asia, where he led the administration’s work on the Indo-Pacific region, in particular its shift on China policy. Pottinger is credited with raising awareness of Chinese Communist Party efforts to spread influence and interfere in various U.S. institutions, including academia, the tech sector and Wall Street.

Before his White House service, Pottinger spent the late 1990s and early 2000s in China as a reporter for Reuters and the Wall Street Journal. He then fought in Iraq and Afghanistanas a US Marine during three combat deployments between 2007 and 2010. Following active duty, he founded and led an Asia-focused risk consultancy and ran Asia research at an investment fund in New York

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>>16773701

Hadn't watched but could be informative

Matt Pottinger: “I'm Really Proud of My Service in the Trump Administration” | Amanpour and Company

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Sep 13, 2021

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North Korea is claiming a successful test-firing of new cruise missiles, bringing renewed focus to the Korean peninsula. It’s a region Matt Pottinger knows well, having reported extensively from Asia as a journalist before he became deputy national security advisor to President Trump. Pottinger speaks with Walter Isaacson about the threat to the region and why he resigned from the White House after the attack on the Capitol in January.

Originally aired on September 13, 2021.

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Interdasting.

Politico seemingly crapping on Pottinger in January for not "going after" trump after resigning in protest

They resigned in protest over Jan. 6 — then never went after Trump again

By Meridith McGraw and Daniel Lippman

01/03/2022 04:30 AM EST

Updated: 01/03/2022 06:47 AM EST

The administration officials who defected from the administration over the riots have almost all receded from public view even as Trump’s stayed put.

In the hours after a mob of angry Donald Trump supporters stormed Capitol Hill on Jan. 6, a number of prominent Trump administration officials and Republicans decided that they’d had enough.

With a mix of anger and outrage, they condemned Trump for either stoking the riots or doing next-to-nothing to stop them. Cabinet officials submitted letters of resignation. Golf buddies and top donors broke their alliances. Top advisers said they’d been let down by Trump.

It was a notable moment of public dissent after four years marked mostly by fidelity. But its impact has proved minimal.

One year after the Jan. 6 riot, the voices of those who broke with Trump over that day have mostly been muted, moved on, or, in certain instances, come to embrace Trump all over again. POLITICO contacted eighteen Trump administration officials who stepped down as a result of Jan. 6 or whose resignation seemed timed to it. Only one agreed to speak on the record about their decision that day.

“I think it’s about survival,” said Stephanie Grisham, who resigned on Jan. 6 as chief of staff to first lady Melania Trump and recently published a book that criticized the president’s and first lady’s handling of the riots. “If you stand up then you’re going to be out there alone.”

Twelve months ago, the outgoing president’s political future appeared to be in serious jeopardy. Not only had he lost his reelection bid, but his post-election conduct — including the peddling of baseless lies about the integrity of Joe Biden’s victory— and his encouragement of a D.C. gathering timed with Congress’ certification of the vote, had created the kindling that led to the riots.

When those rioters stormed the capitol and Trump offered only a milquetoast response, the condemnation was swift.

MATT POTTINGER

Deputy national security adviser to Trump, Matt Pottinger, resigned on the afternoon of Jan. 6 as the riots unfolded on Capitol Hill. Pottinger took a lead role in orchestrating the administration’s early response to Covid-19 pandemic and spearheaded the administration’s China portfolio.

Pottinger is now a distinguished fellow at the Hoover Institution and since leaving the White House has written op-eds and done interviews on U.S.-China relations. Pottinger declined an interview request.

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Well, Well, Well

this hearing could be interdasting.

https://archive.ph/1Grxz

Meet Captain Matt Pottinger, United States Marine Corps

By Peter Osnos

April 5, 2011

Matt Pottinger is a sandy-haired, 37-year-old man whose easy manner and charm provide cover for a remarkable biography and a very important set of messages about the wars the United States is fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. After a tour in Iraqas an intelligence officer with an infantry battalion in the initial troop surge and two tours in Afghanistan, including as adviser to a senior general with whom he collaborated on a controversial paper critical of intelligence gathering, Pottinger is now on "individual ready reserve." He is this year's Edward R. Murrow Fellow at The Council on Foreign Relations, which is intended to give returning foreign correspondents a chance to reflect on their years abroad. Pottinger qualifies for the fellowship because he joined the Marines in 2005 after a decade as a reporter, which culminated in his work at the Beijing bureau of the Wall Street Journal. As a respected reporter, he traveled widely in the Chinese countryside and covered the horrific tsunami in South Asia in 2004.

Pottinger was 32 when he decided to join the Marines, years older than most entrants to Officer Candidate School, and he spent months in Beijing getting his body in shape. Marine OCS is a grueling process intendedexplicitlyto force out as many of the young men as possible (women are trained separately) so that those who complete the 10 weeks of boot camp are considered ready for the next stage of training and ultimately deployment to the war zones. Pottinger says that 40 percent of his class at OCS left before it was over. Having made the commitment to serve, Pottinger had to submerge many of the traits that brought him to the Marines in the first place. "I learned to be very, very humble," he said in one of our conversations, accepting the notion that he had to endure the torments of experienced Marine drill instructors to gain the mental and physical toughness that are essential qualities for leadership. The independent thinking that good correspondents develop had to be replaced with unquestioning obedience to rapid-fire commands.

As an undergraduate at the University of Massachusetts, Pottinger studied Chinese, which was how he landed at Reuters and the Wall Street Journal. While his journalism career was progressing, Pottinger started to develop an idealized role the U.S. military could play in global conflicts. Covering the tsunami, for instance, he encountered the enormous humanitarian contribution being made by Americans, including Marine units returning from Iraq deployments. In China, he came up against police state excesses, especially when he traveled to demonstrations in the countryside. Long hours being interrogated by local authorities reinforced his sense that he should find a way to serve American democratic principles, even as he understood that these were often undermined by realities on the ground in war zones. After his basic and infantry training, Pottinger became an intelligence specialist. While on stand down in Okinawa after his first Afghanistan tour, Pottinger's reports caught the attention of top commanders,and he was recruited to work with Maj. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, then the deputy chief of staff for intelligence under Gen. Stanley McChrystal.

The best reporting, Pottinger says, comes from experienced print journalists who take the time to embed with military units in the field and, when they can, in local communities.

I cannot do justice to the development of Pottinger's ideas in snippets from several interviews, but fortunately, as he closed out his second Afghan tour, he was co-author with Flynn and Paul D. Batchelor of the Defense Intelligence Agency of an extensive analysis called "Fixing Intel: A Blueprint for Making Intelligence Relevant in Afghanistan." The unclassified report was eventually released by the Center for a New American Security, a Washington think tank. It attracted both accolades for its candor and criticism from those, especially in the Pentagon, who challenged its judgments. Pottinger's personal appraisal about the inadequacies of intelligence, as I heard him describe them, reflect his background as a journalist. The best of reporting, he says, even in this digital age, comes from experienced print journalists who take the time to embed with military units in the field and, when they can, in local communities. Their stories can provide senior officers with a coherent sense of the situation in contested areas that often goes beyond the collated data that makes its way through the bureaucracy to policymakers.

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Potted Plant?

>>16773793

Anons.

Pottinger worked with Flynnon Flynns report

Q4610 Flynn drop 2days ahead of schedule

>The best reporting, Pottinger says, comes from experienced print journalists who take the time to embed with military units in the field and, when they can, in local communities.

>I cannot do justice to the development of Pottinger's ideas in snippets from several interviews, but fortunately, as he closed out his second Afghan tour, he was co-author with Flynn and Paul D. Batchelor of the Defense Intelligence Agency of an extensive analysis called "Fixing Intel: A Blueprint for Making Intelligence Relevant in Afghanistan."