DAY TWO

El Jefe del Mar A Lardo had another bad day in the hearings of the Special Committee to Investigate the January 6, 2021 Attack on the Congress.

The big takeaway is: Trump Knew From The Outset That He Was Lying About The Election Being Stolen.

In her opening statement on the second day of the January 6th Select Committee hearings, Republican Rep. Liz Cheney said:

“First, you will hear firsthand testimony that the president’s campaign advisers urged him to await the counting of votes and not to declare victory on election night. The president understood, even before the election, that many more Biden voters had voted by mail. Because President Trump ignored the advice of his campaign experts. And told his supporters only to vote in person. Donald Trump knew, before the election, that the counting of those mail-in ballots, and several states, would not begin until late in the day and would not be complete for multiple days. This was expected, reported, and widely known.

“You will also hear testimony that President Trump rejected the advice of his campaign experts on election night. And, instead, follow the course recommended, by an inebriated Rudy Giuliani, to just claim he won. And insist that the vote counting stop. To falsely claim everything was filed — fraudulent. He falsely told the American people that the election was not legitimate. In his words, quote, a major fraud. Millions of Americans believed him.”

“The testimony presented today has established that Donald Trump knew he was lying when he claimed the election was stolen,” Rep. Lofgren (D-CA) said in her introduction, “Former President Trump’s plan to overturn the election relied on a sustained effort to deceive millions of Americans with knowingly false claims of election fraud. All elements of the plot relied on convincing his supporters about these false claims.”

The witnesses made the case that Trump knowingly lied to his supporters about the 2020 election, despite being told the truth on Election Night, and that millions of Americans have believed him.

Trump’s own campaign advisers - Republicans all - and his Department of Justice, and its cybersecurity experts all told him the same thing. Regarding the outlandish claims about Dominion voting machines and Venezuelan conspiracies started by a dead politician, White House lawyer, Eric Hirschmann stated, “I thought the Dominion stuff, I never saw any evidence whatsoever to sustain these allegations.”

Former US Attorney Bjay Pak testified that the DOJ investigated Rudy’s Giuliani’s claims about ballots being brought into the counting room in Atlanta, stating that “We interviewed the FBI and individuals depicted in the videos, and they were double and triple counting the ballots and determined that nothing irregular happened in the counting and the allegations made by Mr. Giuliani were false.”

Surprise, surprise, The Big Lie was also the “Big Ripoff”: Trump and his closest advisors knew the vote fraud claims were false and continued to push them up until the violence on January 6th, raising money to “continue the fight.” After January 6, the Trump campaign also pushed the lies to raise funds. Hundreds of millions of dollars were rasied on the promise to the donors that the funds would be used for the legal fight, but they didn’t use the money for that purpose. Trump paid his family with legal fund donations, Again, Lofgren: “For example, we know that Guilfoyle was paid for the introduction she gave at the speech on January 6th. She received compensation for that - $60,000 for two and a half minutes. You had money going to Mark Meadows’ foundation and to another foundation that hired the Trump supporters who lost their jobs. So it wasn’t what he said to his donors, this is to defend the election. It was an entirely different purpose. I think that was deceptive and not right.” The committee discovered the Save America PAC made millions of dollars of contributions to pro-Trump organizations including $1 million to Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows charitable foundation, and $1 million to the American Policy Institute, a conservative institute that has several Trump officials on the payroll. $204,000 went to the Trump hotel in Washington and over $5 million to Event Strategies, the company that ran the January 6 rally.

So, Trump knew his claim was a lie from Election Night, and continued to push it. He also used the lie to defraud his supporters.

And then, there’s this:

Attorney General Garland told reporters at a DOJ event today: “I am watching, and I will be watching all of the hearings. Although I may not be able to watch all of it live. But I’ll be sure I will be watching all of it. I can assure you that January 6th prosecutors are watching all the hearings.”

If I was El Jefe, I’d be hoping that the next hamberder would let my fat ass exit the scene. That would certainly Make America Great Again.

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