TWGB: Here's the Report

 

The long-anticipated January 6th Committee Final report is out and it's here at this link.  At 800-something pages, it sounds like it would be pretty hefty, but you can blast past the copious footnotes just to get the narrative of the thing--and of course, if you watched the televised hearings, you already know a lot of what it in there. 

The bottom line is: everything comes down to the former president--but we knew that. TrumpWorld knew it too--they protected Trump. Take the odd case of former Trump aide Cassidy Hutchinson's legal counsel, who definitely was interested in her protecting Trump, not in her best legal interests. As in, that's point blank what he said:

“We just want to focus on protecting the president,” Ms. Hutchinson recalled Stefan Passantino, a former Trump White House lawyer who represented her during her early interactions with the committee, telling her.

There's probably a lot of that going around. It's been likened to mob lawyers and I don't see a problem with the analogy. 

I'm seeing some complaints from people who've blogged or reported on the events surrounding the 1/6 insurrection who are concerned about what the report doesn't show, but I think there has to be a limit to how many rabbit holes one wants to jump in and the committee had to pick and choose between things that could actually be usefully examined and addressed. How do you solve a problem like, for example Ginni Thomas? 

I'm not sure there was a good recommendation, there. Same with trying to tease out what can be revealed from all those folks who plead the fifth or thought that contempt was the better part of valor. 

To me, the most interesting parts are left for the end of the report, the sections labeled Appendix Three, The Big Rip-Off: Follow the Money and Appendix Four, Malign Foreign Influence. This is because the two recurring themes I come back to over and over again is that Trump is a confidence trickster, and that Putin's government wants the US owned by a confidence trickster. Trump encouraged his faithful little marks to give their money to a scheme to undermine this country. Trump gets to use that money for his legal expenses, they, for their part, get to participate in sedition. 

The RNC, and many GOP elected, had only been too happy to go along with a swindle that they had to know was not true. Trump himself knew he had lost and admitted as much. Fox News, one of the biggest spreaders of the voter fraud fertilizer and now facing a defamation lawsuit, has had their on-air personalities admit they knew better.  I don't for a minute think that the Republican congress people (not even Gohmert, Gosar, Greene, etc.) cared what was true. 

But at what cost to national security? Because you can't support a divisive fraud and not weaken us a country. One of my major premises has been that if you accept that Putin supports Trump (and vice versa) you also have to accept that you are no longer putting America first, because there simply is no reason to believe that Putin gives one shit about the best interests of the US. It's far more likely he is against them. 

This is why I have likened the GOP in the TWGB series to sunshine patriots that talk boldly of their love of country but run like Josh Hawley when asked to do one actual tough thing to defend it--or rather, a thing that wouldn't even be so tough, only scrupulous. It's also why I grit my teeth at the claim that no Republicans "of good standing" were on the committee, when apparently the price of that good standing was fealty to a bloody-minded fraud.