IdleRich

IdleRich
You should be skeptical of everything, hence why I specified it was a rumour and hadn't been confirmed.
I don't think anyone was accusing you of gullibility or anything else @version
Personally I had heard that this guy had died, I had also heard that he said that paid agitators were involved. I also believe that he didn't say that they were FBI or false flag agitators (as MAGA believes) or just Proud Boys, Oathkeepers, Boogaloo Boys etc which is entirely possible and which would simply be confirming the official version of events. I hadn't heard any rumours that he was supposed to appear at the hearings either... in fact the MAGA conspiracy seems to be that the Dems had picked this guy as a witness even though he was gonna completely undermine there story by saying it was a false flag operation... and then they murdered him (nine years ago) to stop him testifying. Which clearly makes no sense.
 

Leo

Well-known member
Cheney says that Trump allies have been intimidating committee witnesses in messages that sound more like Mafia warnings than communications with a former president’s aides. “He wants me to let you know he’s thinking about you. He knows you’re loyal.”

She’s describing a “concerning practice” by which people are reminded of the risks of being on Trump’s wrong side. We’ve heard versions of that kind of thing come up since the Mueller investigation.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Elsewhere, Ghislaine Maxwell gets 20 years.
Good. It's kinda weird that she has been found guilty of selling underage girls for sex... which should mean they are one hundred percent certain she did it. But isn't it a bit odd that the other side of the equation - the people buying the girls - is blank? It feels like a maths equation that is balanced... but one side is hidden, so how can we know it's balanced?
 

Leo

Well-known member
it's been said before but...

“This is the smoking gun,” Solomon Wisenberg, a former deputy independent counsel in Ken Starr’s investigation that led to Bill Clinton’s impeachment, tells me. He says there's no question that today's hearing establishes a case for Trump's criminal culpability on “seditious conspiracy charges.”
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Cheney says that Trump allies have been intimidating committee witnesses in messages that sound more like Mafia warnings than communications with a former president’s aides. “He wants me to let you know he’s thinking about you. He knows you’re loyal.
She’s describing a “concerning practice” by which people are reminded of the risks of being on Trump’s wrong side. We’ve heard versions of that kind of thing come up since the Mueller investigation.
Well he has no jobs in government to offer people and he's either unwilling or unable to pay bribes so that means the carrot option is not really available - that leaves stick.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
My feeling is that Trump will never be president again. But yeah it could easily be De Santis and it's hard to see that he will be better. The GOP is, at least in part, a rogue monstrosity of a party and the bad part is in the ascendancy at the moment. Whoever they nominate will be an arsehole and, unless the non-crazy part of the party is sufficiently horrified to switch sides, there is no particular reason I can see why they shouldn't win.

Just reading that back it sounds as though I'm saying that the GOP WILL win, I just mean they will have as good a chance as the Dems - which is crazy really considering how nuts and criminal half of them are. It sort of feels that they should split into two parties, one that is truly conservative (or RINO to MAGA) and another Tea Party/MAGA/Trumpleton bit, but of course if that happened then both parties would have no chance of ever winning the presidency so they remain locked in an uneasy embrace, distrusting each other but unable to leave.
 

Leo

Well-known member
DeSantis is conservative, but not a corrupt, lying POS like Trump. He'd never surround himself with Rudy or Sydney Powell, for example. He'd be bad in lots of ways, maybe worse in some because he's a more acceptable face. But his policies would suck.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
I didn't hear the thing today and most of the snippets I've read have been more of the same kind of stuff we'd heard before. All bad of course but no real eye-opening stuff. But now skimming through it myself this bit sticks out

Trump was angry the Secret Service wasn’t letting people in to the Jan. 6 rally at the Ellipse even though they declined to go through security because it was believed they had weapons, Hutchinson testified“
They aren’t here to hurt me,” Hutchinson recalled hearing Trump say. “Let them march to the Capitol from here.” Trump, she said, demanded the magnetometers be taken away so that people with weapons could get close to the rally stage.

So Trump wanted people marching on the Capitol to be allowed to bring in weapons cos he was convinced they weren't gonna be used on him? That seems unbelievably awful if true. Surprised that that isn't the headline.

But if you guys heard it or saw it, can you draw attention to anything that seems important please?
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Cipollone seems to emerge as the voice of restraint and reason in much of the stuff I'd read before and the testimony we're hearing today. I get the impression that he was the one that understood that Trump was a number of the schemes that Trump or his team came up with would have been absolutely illegal and complete fascism. For me it's interesting to think, if they'd done some of the things he wanted such as seizing voting machines and imposing their own electors and so on and so forth, what would have happened? Would Trump have been able to steal the election, or would it just mean that he still failed and that he and his team would be in far more serious legal jeopardy now? And was Cipolline trying to stop it happening cos he was genuinely appalled by the illegality of the mooted actions, or was he just worried about going to jail later.

I suppose what I'm wondering really is why didn't they get Cipolline as a witness? I know that he was one of the names people guessed at today, but why didn't they ask him?

Also, if Trump had gone full fascist and done some of the things he suggested... was there any realistic way he could have stayed in power?
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
In one example, the message sent to the witness said that they would stay in the “good graces” of Trump World if they protected the right people. The message also warned that Trump reads transcripts and to keep that in mind during their testimony.
Another example read: “(A person) let me know you have your deposition tomorrow. He wants me to let you know that he is thinking about you. He knows you’re loyal, and you’re going to do the right thing when you go in for your deposition.”
Surely no-one believed that bit.
 
Top