Consider This from NPR - What We've Learned From A Month Of January 6th Committee Hearings

Episode Date: June 29, 2022

Cassidy Hutchinson's testimony before the January 6th committee landed with a bang. The surprise hearing on Tuesday, featuring this aide to former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, was the most powerful evidence to date in the case that House investigators have been building through hours of public hearings.NPR Senior Political Editor and Correspondent Domenico Montanaro and NPR National Justice Correspondent Carrie Johnson walk through the case the committee has built so far, its implications for a potential criminal prosecution of former president Donald Trump and the impact it might have on an extremely polarized American public.In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

We've heard the story of January 6th from many different narrators. They include Capitol Police officers on the front lines like Caroline Edwards. What I saw was just a war scene. It was something like I'd seen out of the movies. I couldn't believe my eyes. There were officers on the ground. You know, they were bleeding. They were throwing up.

The narrators have included aides who witnessed the pressure campaign on former President Mike Pence, like his chief counsel Greg Jacob. Mr. Jacob, did Donald Trump ever call the vice president to check on his safety? He did not. And Justice Department officials like Richard Donahue, who then-President Trump urged to investigate one voting fraud conspiracy theory after another. It was clear to us that there were a lot of people whispering in his ear, feeding him these conspiracy theories and allegations. And I felt that being very blunt in that conversation might help make it clear to the president that these allegations were simply not true. This week, we finally got a view from inside the president's inner circle on the day of the insurrection.

I overheard the president say something to the effect of, you know, I don't effing care that they have weapons. They're not here to hurt me. Take the effing bags away. Cassidy Hutchinson, a close aide of Trump's chief of staff Mark Meadows testified in a surprise hearing of the January 6th committee. She told lawmakers that Trump knew there were armed supporters in the crowd that he urged to the Capitol, and he tried to go to the Capitol himself. Trump denied her sworn testimony in a string of posts on his social media platform. Even after a presidency with two impeachment trials, these were the most explosive allegations against Trump yet. As an American, I was disgusted.

It was unpatriotic. It was un-American. We were watching the Capitol building get defaced over a lie. Consider this. Tuesday's testimony filled in a huge piece of the puzzle in the story of the insurrection. We'll take a look at the rest of the picture the January 6th committee has revealed. From NPR, I'm Ari Shapiro. It's Wednesday, June 29th.

This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally, and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Download the WISE app today or visit WISE.com. T's and C's apply. It's Consider This from NPR. This month, there have been six public hearings of the January 6th committee, dozens of hours of testimony. We're going to step back and look at the case that the panel has built so far

with two people who've been following the investigation from the jump, NPR National Justice Correspondent Kerry Johnson and Senior Political Editor and Correspondent Domenico Montanaro. Hey there. Hi, Ari. Big picture, what do each of you think these hearings have shown us that we did not know before? former vice president, or all the way down to someone like Shea Moss, who was a former Fulton County election worker who had testified to the fact that her life has essentially been turned upside down because of the pressure that had been put on her. I haven't been anywhere at all.

I've gained about 60 pounds. I just don't do nothing anymore. I don't want to go anywhere. I second guess everything that I do. It's affecting my life in a major way. Carrie? One of the things that really stuck out to me was how many people had alarm bells ringing in their ears across the system, across the federal government. We've heard that the White House counsel, Pat Cipollone, was basically raising questions about the possibility that people inside the White House were about to commit some very serious criminal offenses. And yet, much of these details, these details never leaked out. The idea that we had people testifying that former President Trump told people inside the Justice Department, just say there was election fraud, just say the election was corrupt and

leave the rest to me. That is starting to show a state of mind that people investigating criminally might be interested in. That leave the rest to me came out in testimony from the acting second in command at the Justice Department, Richard Donahue. He responded very quickly and said, essentially, that's not what I'm asking you to do. What I'm just asking you to do is just say it was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressman. We should also mention that these people who are ringing alarm bells, the witnesses are overwhelmingly Republicans, people who at one point were allies of Donald Trump. Now, this is the thing that's been striking to me is that you have almost everyone who's testified been a Republican. You know, this conspiracy has to go pretty darn deep for a lot of the people who think that they want to dismiss all of these folks as just having

an ax to grind. As you watch these hearings, what strikes you as the goal? Is it to prove criminal culpability or is it something else? Well, to me, the committee has said, including committee members like Jamie Raskin, a Democrat from Maryland who used to be a constitutional law professor, that his goal here is to tell the American people a story of what happened and to fill in some of the very important and critical details about actions that led to the deaths of people inside the Capitol and near the Capitol and beyond after January 6, 2021. I want to see justice done in all of these cases. I think that's critical. I know there's a great public hunger for it.

And we will also be making recommendations about the legislative changes that we need in order to stop these authoritarian assaults on our democracy. But of course, covering the Justice Department for so long, Ari, I'm really looking at a lot of this from the lens of what the Justice Department may or is, in fact, investigating now. And that's whether any high-level people in former President Trump's inner circle or the former president himself may ultimately be brought to justice for some of the things that went on here. And when you look at it through that lens, from the perspective of a prosecutor making a decision of whether to bring a case against a former president, which would be unheard of, I mean, where do you think they stand on that? Unheard of, Ari, but there are some things that we have heard in this testimony before this committee that have been really eye-opening. I'm thinking yesterday, I'm thinking we heard Cassidy Hutchinson testify about the former president knowing that some of his supporters

were armed. You know, I don't effing care that they have weapons. They're not here to hurt me. Take the effing mags away. And wanting them to march to the Capitol. Some nuance and details that Hutchinson testified about with respect to her boss, former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, perhaps getting on the phone with people inside the Willard Hotel a day before the assault on the Capitol. I had made it clear to Mr. Meadows that I didn't believe it was a smart idea

for him to go to the Willard Hotel that night. I wasn't sure everything that was going on at the Willard Hotel, although I knew enough about what Mr. Giuliani and his associates were pushing during this period. I didn't think that it was something appropriate for the White House Chief of Staff to attend or to consider involvement in. I spoke in particular with Steven Salzberg today. He used to run the criminal division at the Justice Department. He thinks that Cassidy Hutchinson put Mark Meadows in the crosshairs regarding the criminal probe in particular. Domenico, what about the court of public opinion? If these investigators are building

a case against the president and his allies? Is it landing with the American people? Well, you know, I think one of the big picture things as far as these hearings go is they're for history, right? And I think that that can be kind of overlooked. And when you fill in a lot of these details, even though a good deal of information had been reported beforehand, a lot of these details, a lot of the temperament of the president, those kinds of things hadn't really been known publicly before. And you do have to wonder if in the medium term of the president, those kinds of things hadn't really been known publicly before. And you do have to wonder if in the medium term, probably not likely in the short term because of short-term considerations like high inflation and high gas prices that Republicans are still favored to take back the House this year. But if you're looking at 2024 and President Trump being

the person who is far and away the frontrunner for the 2024 nomination, even if you're a Republican who supports President Trump, who voted for him previously, there are a lot of people waiting in the wings to take his place culturally, to push his movement, but not have the same level of drama that has surrounded him. And we had seen sort of a revisionary action sort of taking place on President Trump, former President Trump. Now you have to wonderinger, there is no cross-examination from anyone who supports the president. And so these hearings end up letting one narrative unfurl pretty uninterrupted. You know, this was kind of an all-in situation for congressional Republican leadership in particular, like Kevin McCarthy, who was essentially saying, we are not going to participate in this, not going to have any wedge come between themselves and

former President Trump, who is the most influential person in the party. And what their calculation essentially is, is that they have enough of a lock and hold on their base through conservative media in particular, where they're not going to even take in these hearings to hear the primary source information. And largely, that's true. There was a CBS YouGov poll out last week that showed that while seven in 10 Democrats are paying close attention to the hearings, only a quarter of Republicans are. So Republican leadership's bet is that they're not even going to hear it.

And if a tree falls in the forest and you're thousands of miles away, they don't even know that it made a sound. You know who is listening to these hearings? The Attorney General of the United States, Merrick Garland, and the people who are prosecuting hundreds of criminal cases related to January 6th. And we are now getting a sense of how difficult these decisions are going to be for the people atop the Justice Department, because it's getting really hard to argue that there's not enough evidence to investigate here and potentially really hard to argue there's not enough evidence not to consider bringing criminal charges. And then you get into this area of, well, is it better for the country

or not to not criminally charge a former president of the United States? Is that a question a prosecutor should be asking? Those are the kinds of things that are going to be going on inside the Justice Department at the very highest levels in the months to come. As you've watched these many hours of hearings, could you each choose just one moment that really stood out to you that you will never forget? Carrie, you want to go first? I guess the image of the White House counsel, Pat Cipollone, who, as we've heard from other witnesses, was kind of in an impossible job at this stage, you know, leading up to January 6th, on the day of January 6th, going into the chief of staff's office and basically warning that the president under no circumstances should be allowed to go to the Capitol where some of his armed supporters were marching.

This was a moment that Cassidy Hutchinson described yesterday. And Hutchinson knew that. Mark Meadows knew that. And Hutchinson said Meadows basically wasn't all that interested in intervening or acting. That's some really hard stuff to stomach. Domenico? You know, there were a lot of things that obviously stood out that were very explosive and dramatic. But the thing that maybe was a little less, you know, got a little less attention was when we heard from Gabriel Sterling, the elections official in Georgia, who talked about the problem with convincing people who maybe are skeptical of this stuff politically to actually get them to see it and to change their minds.

I remember there's one specific attorney that we know that we showed and walked him politically, to actually get them to see it and to change their minds. I remember there's one specific attorney that we know that we showed and walked him through. This wasn't true. Okay, I get that. This wasn't true. Okay, I get that. This wasn't five or six things. But at the end, he goes, I just know in my heart that cheated. He said, the problem is you're getting into people's hearts. And that is something for me that it's very difficult to kind of look past, and it really stopped me in my tracks. There are so many puzzle pieces yet to be filled in. Is there one you would particularly like to see, somebody you would especially like to hear from in the hearings yet to come? Ari, what I want to hear more on is this idea of pardons, of specific people requesting pardons.

We have testimony from multiple people that some Republican members of Congress requested pardons. We have testimony from multiple people that some Republican members of Congress requested pardons. We have testimony from Cassidy Hutchinson that Rudy Giuliani and Mark Meadows requested pardons. Some of that is in dispute. Hutchinson has been under oath. We have not heard from these other people under oath. She has not been cross-examined. But the idea of requesting a pardon is really important from a criminal law perspective because it could demonstrate consciousness of guilt. I don't think we have all the evidence on that yet. I want to know more. NPR National Justice Correspondent Kerry Johnson

and Senior Political Editor and Correspondent Domenico Montanaro. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Ari Shapiro.