Past being prologue, count on the committee to overplay its hand.
Past being prologue, count on the committee to overplay its hand.
‘ The only reason I know [of] to ask for a pardon is because you think you’ve committed a crime.” This absurd coup de grâce was offered by outgoing congressman Adam Kinzinger at last week’s encore performance of the January 6 committee — as we’ve recounted, what the committee calls “hearings” are actually scripted melodramas, sprinkled with snippets of video mined 60 Minutes–style for insertion into the committee’s narrative.
Looking back a few days later, I can’t recall whether this straining-to-be-memorable soliloquy was delivered in the mode we’ve come to know as Weepy Kinzinger or merely Cloying Kinzinger, but it surely was a shot across the bow at Donald Trump’s House Republican allies. The sorties will continue this afternoon, when the committee convenes an abruptly scheduled session, poised to focus on the pardons.
With all this chatter about congressional pardons, bear in mind that Trump didn’t confer any. Pardons are yet another thing that didn’t happen in what the committee has depicted as Trump’s elaborate, seven-dimensional conspiracy to overturn the election.
Kinzinger, an Illinois Republican, is retiring because he had no prospect of being reelected (redistricting has at least as much to do with that as his anti-Trump ardency). That makes him ideal as the committee’s front line against fellow House members. Kinzinger, a clever guy, undoubtedly knows that his assertion about why people seek pardons is a stretch. Even if one were entirely convinced of one’s innocence, it would be perfectly reasonable to seek a pardon out of concern that the opposition party, about to take control of the government, would try to criminalize its adversaries and frame them as enemies of the state.
But dramatic flourishes are prized over factual ones in this venue. After last week’s two performances, covering Trump’s plots to pressure state officials (Tuesday) and then to exploit the Justice Department in aid of his scheme (Thursday), the committee indicated it would be breaking for a few weeks, going back in the studio before resuming the tour later this summer. Yet on Monday, it suddenly scheduled a public session for today. The panel held its cards close to the vest, indicating for hours that it would be presenting a “live witness” (meaning, one who is not merely animate but would also be giving testimony in the committee room rather than via video recording), and that “recently obtained evidence” would be addressed.
Late last night, news broke that the mystery witness is Cassidy Hutchinson, a former special assistant to the president — really, to Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows.
Hutchinson is not a new witness. Kinzinger played video snippets of her deposition testimony on Thursday. To date, her relevance is a matter of great personal importance to the committee: She corroborates the controversial allegation, first posited by committee vice chairwoman Liz Cheney (Kinzinger’s only fellow Republican on the panel), that some of Trump’s House Republican allies, including Representative Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, sought pardons from Trump in the weeks before he left office, mostly — but not exclusively — after the Capitol riot that Democrats labeled an “insurrection” against the United States. Calling into question the honor of Cheney and the committee, Perry counters that “the notion that I ever sought a presidential pardon for myself or other members of Congress is an absolute shameless and soulless lie.”
According to the released snippets of Hutchinson’s testimony, “blanket pardons” were sought for Trump’s House GOP allies. In a December 21, 2020, White House meeting, they had urged the president to order the Justice Department to investigate election fraud in key states, which they insisted had led to Joe Biden’s victory. The committee stresses that these exhortations came in the teeth of overwhelming counter-evidence that DOJ had previously shared with Trump, showing there had been no widespread fraud. The White House and Trump’s congressional allies kept pushing the stolen-election narrative, nevertheless, and Trump continued pressuring DOJ to collaborate — which its leaders steadfastly refused to do.
There may have been up to two dozen House members at the December 21 meeting. Though there are conflicting press accounts, it appears to have potentially included such Trump enthusiasts as Perry, Mo Brooks of Alabama, Jim Jordan of Ohio, Matt Gaetz of Florida, Louie Gohmert of Texas, Paul Gosar and Andy Biggs of Arizona, and Jody Hice and newly elected member Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia. I caveat that some of these may not have been able to attend, but all publicly aligned themselves with the cause of overturning the election.
The question of who was there is relevant because Hutchinson testified that a “blanket pardon” was sought for members in attendance, primarily by Representative Brooks. Kinzinger also introduced an email written by Brooks to the Trump White House staff five days after the January 6 riot, referencing “a request from Matt Gaetz, requesting a pardon for Representative Gaetz himself and unnamed others.”
(Aside: When the first reports hit that the committee would present a mystery witness today, I suspected it would be Brooks. Consistent with Trump’s use-’em-and-burn-’em approach to allies not named Trump, which I described in yesterday’s column about the former president’s contretemps with increasingly estranged sycophant Kevin McCarthy, Trump shed Brooks because he was insufficiently slobbering after the riot. He instead backed Katie Britt, a new, “I’m more MAGA than you” model, and she proceeded to thrash Brooks in the recent primary. Wouldn’t you know it: As Brooks gets ready to join Kinzinger riding into the sunset, he has suddenly let it be known that he’s now ready to cooperate with and testify for the January 6 committee.)
In the key part of her prior video deposition, aired at Thursday’s session, Hutchinson was asked if she was “aware of any members of Congress seeking pardons,” and she replied:
I guess Mr. Gaetz and Mr. Brooks, I know, have both advocated for there’d be a blanket pardon for members involved in that meeting, and a — a handful of other members that weren’t at the December 21st meeting as the presumptive pardons. Mr. Gaetz was personally pushing for a pardon, and he was doing so since early December. I’m not sure why Mr. Gaetz would reach out to me to ask if he could have a meeting with Mr. Meadows about receiving a presidential pardon.
(Another aside: It is worth recalling that Gaetz had been implicated in a federal investigation having nothing to do with the Capitol riot. He has vehemently denied any wrongdoing. Plainly, though, this could explain a pre-riot curiosity about the subject of presidential clemency.)
Hutchinson was also asked in her video deposition whether Trump House allies who were interested in pardons contacted her personally. She said several of them did. Besides Gaetz and Brooks, she added:
Mr. Biggs did. Mr. Jordan talked about congressional pardons, but he never asked me for one. It was more for an update on whether the White House was going to pardon members of Congress. Mr. Gohmert asked for one as well. Mr. Perry asked for a pardon, too.
To put a finer point on it, Hutchinson elaborated that Perry most definitely spoke to her personally to seek a presidential pardon. She contrasted Perry with Greene, who, she had heard, asked Pat Philbin, Trump’s deputy White House counsel, for a pardon but had not spoken with Hutchinson directly about it.
Given Perry’s indignation in denying that he sought a pardon, and the venom he spewed at the committee for stating otherwise, it would obviously be a coup for the committee if Hutchinson provides credible testimony that Perry asked her, personally and directly, to seek a pardon from Trump. It would be an even greater coup if cross-examination were permitted and Hutchinson’s testimony held up after being challenged, but that’s not how the January 6 committee rolls.
In any event, past being prologue, count on the committee to overplay its hand.
Is it significant that President Trump’s congressional allies sought clemency as insurance against future prosecution arising out of the Capitol riot? Of course it is. Could the only conceivable reason for that be that they knew they were guilty of serious crimes? Of course not. Congressman Perry et al. could very well have assessed that they’d gone out on a limb in heedlessly promoting Trump’s “stolen election” canard and that their political adversaries, after taking power on January 20, 2021, would exploit the Capitol riot to try to paint this foolishness as felony misconduct. Not a bad prediction.