ACT THREE OF "MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS"

I’ve been thinking about Hutchinson’s testimony today, and now other bits of the story come into sharper focus in the light of this knowledge. It’s like reading Agatha Christie and coming to the moment where Hercule Poirot gathers everyone and starts describing everything so that it now makes sense.

We’re at Act Three of “Murder on the Orient Express.”

The essential knowledge is that Trump was in on it. He knew what was going to happen. He expected to go to the Capitol after his speech at the Ellipse Rally, whether to enter the capitol himself, or to make another speech outside, but he expected to go there.

He didn’t know that Cipollone had gotten the secret service to agree that he wasn’t going. He didn’t know until he got in The Beast and got told he was going back to the White House.

And then like the kid old who finds out he’s not get to go on his favorite ride at Disneyland, he threw a fit - grabbed the wheel, lunged at the secret service agent, cursed them all out, all of that. He was being thwarted in getting to lead his coup.

This knowledge, the knowledge that they all knew ahead of time, that a significant number of the True Trump Bomb-Throwers expected him to go with the crowd, that Bannon was right to call going to the capitol “Storming the Winter Palace” and to gloat on his podcast the day before that “all hell is going to break loose,” was because he was in on the plan.

Which makes the “war room” in the Willard Hotel not some half-assed game by a bunch of crazies. That now apprears in a very, very different light if the plan was Trump would be at the Capitol to lead the confrontation. It definitely seems it was Trump’s plan and thus was Bannon and Rudy and the crew thought it was going to happen. They were going to be coordinating things. Did they know about the “Quick Reaction Force” the Oath Keepers had in Arlington?

So when Trump was there in the Oval Office watching the TVs, he was not having a predatory thrill seeing the mob terrorize the folks who’d abandoned him.

He was sitting there extremely pissed off that his Secret Service detail had ruined the whole plan. He was supposed to be at the Capitol not stuck back at the White House.

The fact he was so dead set on going to the Capitol that he threw a fit, a tantrum, changes the whole view of things.

The fact he told the Secret Service “get rid of the mags,” demonstrates he knew the people at the Ellipse were armed. This demolishes the Right Wing’s long defense that January 6 was just “good people” at an event that “got out of hand” at worst. It’s the bullshit we all know it was.

They all knew it was going to be violent. They knew three days in advance, at least, when Cipollone told Hutchinson that “we can’t go up to the Capitol.”

The Oath Keepers with their “Quick Reaction Force,” the Proud Boys reconnoitering ahead of the crowd, the guys with handcuffs looking for “Nancy,” the guys who set up the gallows - they were all following orders. They were as serious as a heart attack. If they’d have caught Pelosi, or Schiff, or AOC, or Pence, they’d have done it. Lynched them. Right there.

The biggest impact of this testimony is going to be something different from what we have been thinking the Committee intends. We though they had done their investigating and were now walking the country through it in a series of hearings, after which a report would be issued and the public would decide whatever they will decide.

No. Wrong!

Bennie Thompson and Liz Cheney and Adam Schiff and the rest of the Committee are using the public hearings to furthers the legal investigatory process. The hearings have been set as they have been to create a dynamic in which the hearings’ impact breaks loose more information, more testimony, more evidence from the people who know Cassidy Hutchinson, know she’s a good person, who have been afraid to come forward. The hearings are not just an account of what was found but are a tool for advancing the investigation. With what happened today, Pat Cipollone will testify. He has to. Mick Mulvaney tweeted today that Meadows now has to testify.

The Republicans and official Washington have demonstrated since the first impeachment that they can absorb and normalize Trump’s conduct and criminal behavior, that there is no limit to their willingness to bend over and spread. But this testimony today breaks the logjam. Meadows, Cipollone and the rest can’t continue refusing to testify without putting themselves in the same bucket of shit with Trump, Bannon, Giuliani, Flynn and the rest of the seditionists.

And that means the committee has also increased pressure on the DOJ by an order of magnitude over where things were at yesterday. We’ve already seen last week, with the search of Clark’s home and confiscation of his “electronics,” with intercepting Eastman and confiscating his phone before he could wipe it clean, with the other warrants and subpeonas that were served, with the rising levels of activity in the NY AG investigation, the SEC invstigation of TrumpTwitter, that the temperature of the water in the pot is rising.

Hutchinson’s testimony is the equivalent of putting the lid on the pot as it comes to a boil.

When you strike the King, you MUST kill him. The only people who are still in Trump’s corner are the Truest of the True Believers.

I used to be afraid that Trump’s arrest would lead to widespread civil unrest. I don’t think so after today. Yes, the True Believers will be out there - and when they come out, they will reveal how few there are now.

And yes, the last ones to admit they aren’t his allies are the ones who never really were: the spineless scum of the GOP.

Thanks to the paid subscribers who keep That’s Another Fine Mess going. I hope you new free subscribers will consider changing to paid subscribers. Thank you all for coming by.