Tangle - The Jan. 6 investigation

Episode Date: December 22, 2021

A quick heads up that this is our last podcast until January 3rd. Today's episode is about the House committee investigating the riots at the Capitol in Washington D.C. on January 6th, which voted to hold former Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows in contempt of Congress over his refusal to cooperate with the probe. The full House voted on the measure, which passed bywith a 222-to-208 vote, with just two Republicans — Reps. Liz Cheney (WY) and Adam Kinzinger (IL) — voting “yes" with Democrats. The Justice Department will now decide whether to pursue the contempt referral, a misdemeanor criminal offense that is punishable by up to a year in prison and a fine of up to $100,000.You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here.Our newsletter is written by Isaac Saul, edited by Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, Ari Weitzman, and produced in conjunction with Tangle’s social media manager Magdalena Bokowa, who also created our logo.The podcast is edited by Trevor Eichhorn, and music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75.--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/tanglenews/message Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Can Indigenous ways of knowing help kids cope with online bullying? At the University of British Columbia, we believe that they can. Dr. Johanna Sam and her team are researching how both Indigenous and non-Indigenous youth cope with cyber-aggression, working to bridge the diversity gap in child psychology research. At UBC, our researchers are answering today's most pressing questions. To learn how we're moving the world forward, visit ubc.ca forward happens here. From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle podcast, the place where you get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking

without all that hysterical nonsense you find everywhere else. I am your host, Isaac Saul, and on today's episode, we are going to be talking about Mark Meadows, the former chief of staff to President Donald Trump, and some of the trouble I guess he's waded into, and the January 6th commission, and them holding him in contempt of Congress, and what all of that means. Before we do, though, I have a couple quick updates. First of all, I wanted to let you know about our holiday schedule. Tangle will be taking a break starting this Friday, December 24th, until Monday, January 3rd. That's 2022.

That means we'll be off all of next week. This Friday is Christmas Eve, and next week is a major holiday week that runs into New Year's Eve. So it's a rare chance for our small and mighty team to take a legitimate week-long break and hit the recharge button, which I definitely need to do after the week that I've had. You will hear from us briefly next week. I'm going to send out a quick newsletter to wish everybody happy holidays, but there won't

be any podcasts. week. I'm going to send out a quick newsletter to wish everybody happy holidays, but there won't be any podcasts. Relatedly, I also want to let you know that tomorrow is then our Friday edition coming out on Thursday, which is the special subscribers only Friday edition coming out on Thursday. This week, we're going to be releasing a full transcript of my interview with Andrew Yang. Now, I will confess to you, since you're a loyal podcast listener, that we are going to release the podcast of Andrew Yang in the new year. But if you want to read the interview or get it in writing, it will be released in a subscribers only transcript tomorrow. I think it's worth checking out. There'll be a little intro, some of my writing about him. So it's pretty cool. Also, I wanted to just thank you, stop and pause and say thanks.

In the craziness of COVID and all the things that happened this week, I didn't notice, but we broke 30,000 subscribers. So that's awesome. It's a huge milestone. It's something I wanted to hit before 2022. I didn't even realize that we had done it, but it's amazing to see this idea grow, this newsletter and podcast become a community, this format turn into a website, and so much more. I'm really grateful for everyone who's looking for a better way to navigate political news these days and super stoked about how big our community now is. So thank you. All right, that's it for the housekeeping. So we'll start off with some quick hits. First up, President Biden delivered remarks on the Omicron variant yesterday,

laying out plans to give federal support to hospitals and expand testing. Number two, 1,400 union workers at four Kellogg plants ended a 2.5-month-long strike yesterday after receiving a new contract. It was one of the largest worker strikes in the United States. Number three, the DOJ reversed a ruling that would have required federal inmates released to home confinement during the pandemic to return to prison when the pandemic-related national emergency ended. In other words, those inmates are now going to be able to stay in home confinement even after the pandemic ends. Number four, Harvard professor Charles Lieber was found guilty of lying about his ties to the Chinese government

and his involvement in a Chinese talent recruitment plan. Number five, the U.S. population grew by just 0.1 percent over the last year, its slowest growth ever, thanks in large part to the pandemic, decreased migration, decreased fertility, and increased mortality. Tonight, the House voting to hold Mark Meadows in contempt of Congress, a mostly party line vote expected to refer the former Trump chief of staff and their former colleague to the Department of Justice for possible prosecution. The evidence that the January 6th committee laid out tonight against former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows was truly extraordinary. And it was the yeas are 222 and the nays are 208.

This morning, the House is ramping up the pressure on former President Trump and his allies over January 6th after voting to hold former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows in contempt of Congress. So the House committee investigating the riots at the Capitol in Washington, D.C. on January 6th voted to hold former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows in contempt over his refusal to cooperate with the probe. The full House voted on the measure, which passed by a 222 to 208 vote with just two Republicans, Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kingsinger of Wyoming and Illinois, voting yes with Democrats. The Justice Department will now decide whether to pursue the contempt referral, a misdemeanor criminal offense that is punishable by up to one year in prison and a fine of up to $100,000. So a quick reminder, there are several

investigations happening right now. One is in Congress, where members of this House committee have interviewed over 300 witnesses and collected more than 30,000 documents about the events leading up to January 6th and what happened on that day. In October, the same committee also voted to hold Steve Bannon in contempt of Congress. We covered that in a previous podcast and newsletter. Then there are the Justice Department investigations into the riots and some of the criminal charges, the local stuff. That's separate. More than 700 people have been charged for various crimes, ranging from trespassing to assaulting a police officer. Last week, Robert Palmer was sentenced to more than five years in prison for throwing a

fire extinguisher at an officer. A few days later, Devlin Thompson was sentenced to nearly four years in prison for hurling a speaker at an officer and then hitting him with a baton. Both of those are some of the most serious charges that have been leveled that came out of that January 6th day. So what happened with Meadows? Well, the former chief of staff was an important target for the committee because he had a unique level of access to Trump and his staff leading up to January 6th. Initially, Meadows refused to cooperate, and then he did. He handed over more than 9,000 pages of text, emails, and other communications he had on and around January 6th. When he was subpoenaed to testify, though, he once again refused, citing executive privilege. Last week, Representative Cheney read some of the text messages sent and received by Meadows during the January 6th riots. They made a lot of news. Included were messages from Donald Trump Jr.,

the president's son, and Fox News hosts like Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity. He's got to condemn this shit ASAP. The Capitol Police tweet is not enough, Trump Jr. said to Meadows. Meadows responded, I'm pushing hard. I agree. Trump Jr. wrote back to him, we need an Oval Office address. He has to lead now. It has gone too far and gotten out of hand. Fox News host Laura Ingraham texted Meadows, hey Mark, the president needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home. This is hurting all of us. He is destroying his legacy. Sean Hannity texted Meadows, Can he make a statement? Ask people to leave the Capitol?

Other texts came from people inside the House chamber, like members of Congress and reporters. Hey Mark, protesters are literally storming the Capitol, read one text. Breaking windows on doors, rushing in. Is Trump going to say something? Another text was from Jake Sherman, who runs the insider congressional newsletter Punchbowl News. Do something for us, Sherman said. We are under siege at the Capitol. There's an armed standoff outside the House chamber door. We're helpless. Meadows has sued the panel, asking a court to invalidate subpoenas for being overly broad and burdensome. His lawyer, George Terwilliger, said that he cooperated by handing

over the documents, but he should not be compelled to testify. The select committee's true intentions in dealing with Mr. Meadows have been revealed when it accuses him of contempt, citing the very documents his cooperation has produced, Terwilliger said. Today, we're going to take a look at some of the responses to this new evidence and the contempt charges against Meadows. This is not an attempt to retell the events of January 6th. We've done that before, immediately after, though that might be the focus of a future edition, something to do again. Nor is it an attempt to retell what led up to those events or to settle disputes about allegations of election fraud. We've also covered that a lot. We want to focus on Meadows and focus on what the new evidence is

and what the contempt charges mean. We'll take a look at some commentary from the right and the left and then my take. First up, we'll start with what the right is saying. So the right says that the text showed January 6th was actually an unorganized and unplanned event, that the Fox News hosts have condemned the riots both in public and in private. However, some conservatives actually still blame Trump, saying the text show his allies knew that the Stop the Steal movement was built on lies. In red state, the blogger Banshee said the text showed there was no organized coup that even Trump's family was unsure what to do. The biggest takeaway from this is that there is no evidence here of some grand conspiracy

to overthrow the U.S. government, as Nancy Pelosi, Liz Cheney, and others have publicly speculated, Banshee said. Are we to believe that Donald Trump orchestrated what happened on January 6th but didn't let his own son in on it? Banchi said. Are we to believe that Donald Trump orchestrated what happened on January 6th but didn't let his own son in on it? Or that Trump didn't share his plans with any of his closest confidants in the media? That belabors belief, especially since Meadows himself responded to those texts in agreement, noting that he was coordinating with the president on how to respond. It is abundantly clear at this point that whatever you think of Donald Trump, what happened on January 6th was as much a surprise to him as anyone else, Banchi said. The idea that he hatched and led

some master plan in an attempt to seize power and remain in office never made any sense given what we know. Besides, it makes even less sense when you consider that it didn't happen. Normally, when you want to enact a coup, you actually, you know, enact a coup. Instead, Trump denounced what occurred even if it was a few hours later than some would have liked. He then left the White House without any objections. On Fox News, Tucker Carlson said the text messages prove his colleagues are principled and the investigation is a sham. The January 6th committee has somehow awarded itself the power to seize the personal communications of its political enemies and then make them public, Carlson said. The argument's really simple. Turn over your text messages or we're going to send you to jail. Let's not lie about this. The point of this exercise is not to uncover crimes. The January 6th committee hasn't found any crimes and at this point will not find

any crimes. The point is to harm and humiliate people you disagree with politically and that's what they're doing. Three Fox anchors sent messages to Mark Meadows, and none of them cheered what was happening in the Capitol on January 6, Carlson said. In fact, they were upset by it, even in private, when they assumed no one was listening. And that shouldn't surprise you. These are principled people. What they say in public is not that far from what they say over text messages. So Fox anchors on TV and in private opposed the BLM riots in the summer of 2020. Fox anchors opposed the riot on Capitol Hill in January 2021. It turns out that Fox anchors opposed riots, all riots, no matter who's rioting, and

were the only news anchors in the United States of America who do this. The other channels wait and see who the rioters voted for, then they respond accordingly, as you may have noticed. The other channels wait and see who the rioters voted for, then they respond accordingly, as you may have noticed. Some conservatives, however, like Michael Brendan Daugherty, said that Trump Jr.'s text messages saying things had gotten out of hand show he knew his dad was actually telling lies. Donald Trump's claims of massive election fraud, only in the states he lost, by the way, were treated by people around him as a kind of naughty habit that had to be tolerated or indulged, Daugherty wrote. When the people who treated these claims very seriously started acting like they were true, when they tried to stop the steal by interrupting the ceremony in which Congress certifies the results of the presidential election, then it had gone too far and gotten out of hand. In the months after January 6th, the politically correct move for Trump's cable news apologists has been to ignore the fact that the people who set about investigating the supposed voter fraud

have turned up nothing of consequence or merit. Or it has been to focus obsessively on the potential involvement of the FBI or other intel agencies in the riots to speculate about who may have been planted as agent provocateurs in the crowd. This is worth inquiring about, especially after the FBI's work trying to instigate a kidnapping plot against Governor Whitmer went south. But the riots at the Capitol happened because President Donald Trump simply lied, lied, and lied. All right, so that's it for what the right is saying. This is what the left's take is. The left says these texts show Trump refused to act promptly to stop the riots.

New evidence shows Meadows was attempting to subvert the election and that he has no legal grounds to refuse to testify, especially by claiming executive privilege. In the Washington Post, Greg Sargent said the report recommending contempt charges for Meadows makes it a lot harder to whitewash January 6th. The report discloses that the committee has obtained text messages indicating that Meadows was, quote, pushing hard to condemn this shit, meaning Meadows was urging Trump to publicly call off the rioters. Here's what this really means. Meadows almost certainly has direct knowledge of how Trump responded to all these repeated demands that he call off the violent assault. The report says the committee wants to question Meadows about this, but he's refusing to answer any questions. What is it that

Meadows does not want to testify to? Well, we know from press accounts, such as this Post report, that Trump watched the violent assault unfold on TV and ignored many frantic pleas he stepped in. One Trump advisor told the Post that Trump was enjoying the spectacle of his followers fighting on his behalf. We also know from CNN that House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, the Republican from California, apparently screamed similar pleas to Trump by phone as rioters tried to break into McCarthy's office. McCarthy subsequently recounted that Trump responded, well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are. In USA Today, Dennis Aftergood said that Mark Meadows is sinking in quicksand. Please reconsider, Meadows' experienced lawyer in effect asked the committee on Monday.

It would ill serve the country to rush to judgment on the matter, his lawyer pled by letter. I respectfully ask your indulgence to explain. It was not the kind of letter a lawyer on firm ground sends, Aftergood said. If the committee's report were not rock solid, Meadows would simply wait for the careful Attorney General Merrick Garland to decline to prosecute. Then there was a PowerPoint presentation Meadows gave the committee. It described strategies for overturning the election, including declaring a national security emergency and seizing paper ballots, according to the Washington Post. Former Army Colonel Phil Waldron, who was working with Trump's lawyers, apparently circulated the PowerPoint. The select committee's Sunday report contains evidence

showing that Meadows was likely up to his ears in trying to arrange to overturn the election. That could potentially subject him to multiple criminal charges, including seditious conspiracy. In Slate, William Salatin said the texts have a chilling lesson. Shortly after 2.30, Trump sent out a tweet urging his followers to, quote, stay peaceful. That tweet has been cited as proof that he tried to end the crisis. But the text, combined with other evidence, showed that the trusted figures in Trump's orbit were asking him to do more. They wanted him to tell the rioters to leave the Capitol and go home. On the surface, this looks like a small difference, but Trump refused to do it. Why? The simplest answer is that, as his prior behavior demonstrated, he saw the mob as leverage in a last-ditch effort to overturn the election. He had summoned his

followers to Washington to pressure Congress to halt the certification of the election, and the pressure had succeeded. If he were to disperse the mob, not just ask it to curtail its violence, he would lose his leverage. So, for nearly two hours, he held out. That's what the texts are showing us, that the president was being asked to make a specific concession and that he refused to do so. All right, that's it for the left and the right's take, which brings us to my take. So there's a little bit of a bait and switch going on here. For starters, let me just say that I don't like calling what happened on January 6th an attempted coup or an insurrection. It was a riot, a rally gone mad, a brazen attempt to destroy the Capitol and incite violence against members of

Congress and delay the certification of the election on concocted charges that the 2020 election was stolen. It wasn't stolen, though there are plenty of reasons to criticize the media or big tech, etc., an argument for another day. But coups and insurrections don't involve half-naked guys in Viking hats or dudes cracking Coors Lights and taking selfies in Nancy Pelosi's office. Coups are when the military murders civilians in the streets and then puts a democratically elected leader in prison. They're happening right now all over the world. Words have meaning, and I find the word

riot a much better description of January 6th than coup or insurrection, though if you're going to use one, insurrection, a violent uprising against the government, is much preferred. That's not to excuse what happened on January 6th or anything close to it. On January 7th, I wrote that Trump's legacy was forever tarnished by that day, and I meant it. Police officers were beaten, one of the most important places in our country was defaced and vandalized, and dozens of people prowled the Capitol with the literal stated intent to kill members of Congress. Some of them were carrying weapons, not beer, and some had military experience to commit coordinated violence if they wanted to. I had friends locked inside the Capitol building that day, and some of them are still dealing with

the trauma of what they thought was a near-death experience or being captured by the mob. Ashley Babbitt, a Trump supporter, was shot and killed. Trump himself bears most of the responsibility for what happened. It was an awful day in our history. The bait and switch, though, is that the scariest thing about January 6th wasn't actually the violence. What the January 6th commission and subsequent reporting since then has uncovered is that Trump's team did, in fact, pass around various plans on how to stop the peaceful transfer of power for the first time in U.S. history. This is something I've previously downplayed and underestimated, but I was wrong. We now have hard evidence that Trump campaign

lawyer Jenna Ellis drafted two of those memos, one saying Pence should simply refuse to open envelopes from states whose election results Trump considered to be fraudulent. You can read those memos for yourself. There's a link to them in today's newsletter. And this is just one example. We also have John Eastman's memos and various PowerPoints that were being circulated among Trump officials about potential strategies to keep him in office. Of course, we also know Trump himself was pressuring election officials to find votes, and a Trump aide even sent someone to a Georgia election worker's home, an election worker who was making $16 an hour, in order to try to strong-arm her

into saying there was fraud she didn't believe there was. In the messages Meadows turned over to Congress, there are emails where he expresses his, quote, love for the idea of getting GOP legislators to send alternate electors to Congress, which would have caused an immediate constitutional crisis. These are just a few of the many disturbing examples of how the former president or people in his circle tried to derail his exit from the White House, many of which Meadows participated in or observed. Do I want answers about potential FBI involvement in the riots or the pipe bomber who we mysteriously have no more information on or whether some Capitol police let the rioters through? Yes, yes, and yes. Are some of the rioters being overcharged? Yes. Do Democrats want to make this as politically painful for Republicans as possible?

Of course. Does any of that absolve Mark Meadows or mean he should be able to avoid testifying? No. Just like Bannon, his claims of executive privilege have flimsy legal footing. And given the vital information he's already brought forward, I would love to see him answer questions before Congress. he's already brought forward, I would love to see him answer questions before Congress. All right, that brings us to our question of the day. This one comes from Dave in Seattle,

Washington. He said, it feels like there are fewer bipartisan things being passed as painting the other party as evil becomes higher on everyone's priority list. Where does this lead? At some point, we won't be able to pass anything without one party completely controlling things, right? Is there a possible change that would make it useful to work with the other party? Dave, this is a great question. So there are some things that will always be passed, like military budgets and short-term spending packages to keep the government from shutting down. I think what we have now is actually pretty near the rock bottom. I don't really know how it could get much worse, which is that everyone just stuffs small amendments into these must-have bills in order to get certain things into law. It's also worth noting, though, despite lots of commentary otherwise, that the last couple years have been

more bipartisan than you might imagine. Several COVID-19 relief packages were passed under Trump and Biden with bipartisan support. So was the infrastructure bill and a ban on imports from Xinjiang. Congress even passed a massive anti-corruption bill on a bipartisan basis, though it took tucking it into a national defense spending bill. This is some pretty serious legislation getting votes from both sides of the aisle. Still, I could think of dozens of changes that might help, like reforming campaign finance rules so politicians are acting for constituents and not for donors. I think a media that demonizes each side less would be very helpful. Potentially term limits, though there are lots of downsides to them.

A thriving third party or fourth party or fifth party would make it less of the duopoly, choose one side or the other. And perhaps even filibuster reforms, not abolishing the filibuster, but maybe making it easier for votes and debate to actually happen rather than the filibuster just allowing one party to stop the debate from happening at all. So there's a lot we could get into, but those are just kind of some top line thoughts. All right, that brings us to our story that matters today. This one is from the Associated Press, which is reporting that some $100 billion has been stolen from the U.S. government's COVID-19 relief programs, most via unemployment fraud, according to a new Secret Service report.

The estimate is based on Labor Department data and a series of Secret Service cases. The $100 billion is about 3% of the $3.4 trillion dispersed, but the sheer size of the pot became a major attraction for organized criminals and hackers who had people's personal information. More than 150 defendants in 95 criminal cases have been prosecuted in cases related to the Paycheck Protection Program alone. You can check out some more on this story with a link in today's newsletter. All right, our numbers section. 2,300 is the number of text messages Mark Meadows turned over to Congress. 6,800 is the number of pages of text messages Mark Meadows turned over to Congress. 727 is the number of people who have

been charged in the Capitol riots. 30,000 plus is the number of documents the January 6th commission says it has received. 300 plus is the number of witnesses the commission says it has interviewed. And last but not least, to have a nice day story, this is a great one to wrap up the year. 2020 saw a huge surge in charitable giving, one that set all-time records, but 2021 looks like it could be on pace to break it. Americans donated $2.7 billion on Giving Tuesday this year, a 9% jump from last year. Many Tangle readers actually participated in that giving, for what it's worth. In 2020, Americans donated a total of $471 billion, which was a 5% jump from 2019. So far, 2020 is approaching that number, and we still have December 31st on the calendar, which is one of the most charitable days of the year. Axios has a great story about our

giving habits and how much major companies are now getting in the mix. great story about our giving habits and how much major companies are now getting in the mix. All right, that is it for today's podcast. Like I said, you won't really hear from us next week, maybe a quick hello for the holidays, but otherwise we are going to be off until January 3rd. If you want to stay in the mix, make sure you are subscribed to our newsletter, readtangle.com to do that. And if you want to get our special Andrew Yang subscribers-only interview tomorrow, go to readtangle.com backslash membership and subscribe, and you will get it in your inbox. All right, everybody. Have a Merry Christmas if you're celebrating and a Happy New Year if you don't hear from us.

And we'll see you on the other side of 2021. and we'll see you on the other side of 2021. Our newsletter is written by Isaac Saul, edited by Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, Ari Weitzman, and produced in conjunction with Tangle's social media manager, Magdalena Bokova, who also helped create our logo. The podcast is edited by Trevor Eichhorn and music for the podcast was produced by Diet75. For more from Tangle, subscribe to our newsletter or check out our content archives at www.readtangle.com. you