January 6th Hearings: The Pressure Campaigns

TOPICS DISCUSSED

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January 6th Hearings

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5th Hearing

TRANSCRIPT

Rep. Adam Kinzinger [00:00:00] I remember making a commitment out loud a few times and in my heart repeatedly, even to this day, that if we are going to ask Americans to be willing to die in service to our country, we as leaders must at least be willing to sacrifice our political careers when integrity and our oath requires it. After all, losing a job is nothing compared to losing your life.  

Sarah [00:00:33] This is Sarah Stewart Holland.  

Beth [00:00:34] And this is Beth Silvers.  

Sarah [00:00:36] Thank you for joining us for Pantsuit Politics.  

Beth [00:00:53] Hello and thank you so much for joining us for a new episode of Pantsuit Politics. We have been attempting to track the January 6th hearings very closely, and today we are going to go through hearings four and five. And our reactions to those hearings, I say our reactions because it would be impossible to describe all of the new information that has come to light in these hearings and the impact of that information. But we're going to do our best to catch you up. You can also follow us on social media as we live, tweet and Instagram live, during those hearings. Sarah has been making TikTok recaps of the hearings, and I have been putting together summaries in our newsletter. So in all the places, what we're trying to tell you is we think this is important and we want to give you every resource we can to understand and follow what's happening.  

Sarah [00:01:39] It is important to note that even with all the TikToks and the summaries and the podcast episodes, these hearings are revealing so much activity, criminal and otherwise, that it is essential that you watch them yourselves to get the full and complete picture of the plot to overthrow the election results. We are imploring you to watch the hearings.  

Beth [00:02:08] And you seem to be listening because you're sending us very thoughtful questions and reactions. And the country seems to be receiving this message because the hearings have elicited more cooperation, more evidence being given to the committee. And instead of to Thursday's hearing being the last hearing, it is now just the fifth hearing in a series. And we have been promised that there will be more hearings in the coming weeks, possibly into July, which we're not really pleased about here at Pantsuit Politics, but we will continue to follow them whenever they happen and figure out how to get you the best information and analysis that we can.  

Sarah [00:02:47] And you can even notice from news coverage that major networks are now interrupting their coverage to share the daytime hearings, not just the first primetime hearing. You can tell everyone slowly coming to the realization, oh, they have real stuff and let me tell you, they do. That's what we'll talk about.  

Beth [00:03:08] So we're going to discuss hearings four and five. And then Outside of Politics, we're going to tell you about the week we've had here as the parents of campers.  

[00:03:25] Sarah, I thought it might be helpful before we dive into hearing four, to just try to put it in context of the overall plan. In the first hearing, Representative Cheney told us that we were going to discuss a seven part conspiracy and conspiracy, not in the sense of story made up on the Internet to explain something that's difficult, but in the sense of...  

Sarah [00:03:48] Oh, there may be some of those, too.  

Beth [00:03:50] There will be some of those too.  

Beth [00:03:51] Embedded into the larger conspiracy are some small conspiracies. But we're talking about a seven part plan for Donald Trump to remain in power. And so in the first hearing, she just laid that out. Here's what we're going to tell you. And by the way, let's make sure we get your attention with the fact that January 6th was an unbelievably violent moment. It was not a protest that got out of hand. People were harmed. It was planned and it was all done at Donald Trump's bidding.  

Sarah [00:04:23] So that was our first prime time hearing, really setting the stage. Okay. Then we move on to the second daytime hearing. And this hearing was dedicated to the select committee laying out testimony after testimony after testimony from Trump advisers. Almost every single person who has testified during these hearings has been a Republican who has either worked in the Trump campaign or the Trump administration. And this hearing was showing how campaign advisers, in particular, campaign managers and people within the administration made it clear to Donald Trump that he had lost the election and that there was no truth to his claims of election fraud and that he pursued his legal course of action in the courts. But that got him nowhere. And when it got him nowhere, he took other courses of action.  

Beth [00:05:35] So that was hearing two. Chairman Thompson keeps making the point as someone who's run for office many times that the courts are the end of the line. That as a candidate, you accept the results of the election. You raise any issues you have in court. And what the court says is final and then it's over. But hearing three showed that Donald Trump did not accept it as final, and hearing three really focused on the campaign, a concerted, relentless effort to put Mike Pence in the position where he would exercise authority that he did not have during Congress's hearing to certify the election, that Mike Pence would unilaterally fail to accept electors from states that had been certified, accept fake electors or otherwise, delay the whole process. And that hearing included some really compelling evidence about conversations that were had with the Trump team. Conversations that were had with the Pence team. And about what happened with Mike Pence on the day of January 6th and how he refused to leave the Capitol and wanted to finish the job, get Congress back to work to certify the election results.  

Sarah [00:06:53] As we know now, Mike Pence did not cede to this pressure. But Donald Trump had other plans all at the same time. He was in the process of putting pressure on lots of people beyond Mike Pence. And that brings us to day four of hearings. So this brings us to Tuesday, June 21st, the fourth day of hearings. And this hearing was all about the campaign that Donald Trump engaged in to put pressure on state and local officials to overturn, decertify, deliberately delay the results of the election.  

Beth [00:07:39] Every day of the hearing, a different member of the January 6th committee has been kind of taking the reins, and this is consistent with what was being reported about the committee's work before the hearings, that there's so much here and it's so complex and the volume of evidence and witnesses is such that they've had to split into teams. And so this hearing was run by Representative Adam Schiff of California. I think his opening statement set the stage quite powerfully.  

Rep. Adam Schiff [00:08:08] On November 3rd, 2020, Donald Trump ran for reelection to the office of the presidency and he lost. His opponent joe Biden finished ahead in the key battleground states of Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia and elsewhere. Nevertheless, and for the first time in history, the losing presidential candidate fought to hold on to power. As we have seen in previous hearings, he did so through a variety of means. On Election Day, he sought to stop the counting of the vote, knowing that the millions of absentee ballots elections officials would be counting on Election Day and thereafter would run strongly against him and deliver a victory to Joe Biden. Next, and when he could not stop the counting, he tried to stop state legislatures and governors from certifying the results of the election. He went to court and filed dozens of frivolous lawsuits, making unsubstantiated claims of fraud. When that, too failed, he mounted a pressure campaign directed at individual state legislators to try to get them to go back into session and either declare him the winner, decertify Joe Biden as the winner, or send two slates of electors to Congress, one for Biden and one for him, and pressure Vice President Pence to choose him as the winner. But the state legislatures wouldn't go along with this scheme, and neither would the Vice President. None of the legislatures agreed to go back into special session and declare him the winner. No legitimate state authority in the states Donald Trump lost would agree to appoint fake Trump electors and send them to Congress. But this didn't stop the Trump campaign either. They assembled groups of individuals in key battleground states and got them to call themselves electors, created phony certificates associated with these fake electors, and then transmitted these certificates to Washington and to the Congress to be counted during the joint session of Congress on January 6th. None of this worked. But according to federal District Judge David Carter, former President Trump and others likely violated multiple federal laws by engaging in this scheme, including conspiracy to defraud the United States. You will hear evidence of the former President and his top advisers direct involvement in key elements of this plot, or what Judge Carter called a coup in search of a legal theory. For as judge explained, President Trump's pressure campaign to stop the electoral count did not end with Vice President Pence. It targeted every tier of federal and state elected officials. Convincing state legislatures, he said, to certify competing electors was essential to stop the count and ensure President Trump's reelection. As we have seen in our prior hearings, running through this scheme was a big lie, that the election was plagued with massive fraud and somehow stolen. You'll remember what the President's own attorney general, Bill Barr, said he told the President about these claims of massive fraud affecting the outcome of the election.  

Bill Barr [00:11:32] And I told him that the stuff that his people were shoveling out to the public or boat was bullshit. I mean that the claims of fraud were bullshit.  

Rep. Adam Schiff [00:11:43] The President's lie was and is a dangerous cancer on the body politic. If you can convince Americans that they cannot trust their own elections, that any time they lose it is somehow illegitimate. Then what is left but violence to determine who should govern? This brings us to the focus of today's hearing. When state elections officials refused to stop the count, Donald Trump and his campaign tried to put pressure on them. When state executive officials refused to certify him the winner of states he lost, he applied more pressure. When state legislators refused to go back into session and appoint Trump electors, he amped up the pressure yet again. Anyone who got in the way of Donald Trump's continued hold on power after he lost the election was the subject of a dangerous and escalating campaign of pressure. This pressure campaign brought angry phone calls and texts, armed protests, intimidation and all too often threats of violence and death. State legislators were singled out. So too were statewide elections officials. Even local elections workers diligently doing their jobs, were accused of being criminals and had their lives turned upside down. As we will show the President's supporters heard the former President's claims of fraud and the false allegations he made against state and local officials as a call to action.  

Beth [00:13:17] Sarah, my high level takeaway from this hearing was that I have been wrong in an underlying assumption about all the events leading up to January 6th. I think that I have always looked at Donald Trump and believed, unkindly but vulnerably, I have believed that he is too incompetent to carry off anything that has a level of complexity to it. And what this hearing convinced me of is that he surrounded himself with enough people to have a complex scheme in motion. It wasn't a legal scheme. It wasn't a particularly clever scheme, but it was complicated. And it did have tentacles that reached all over the United States and involved lots and lots of players. You know, the least generous way I can describe it, but the most accurate for me is I always think if he gets into trouble, it's the result of bumbling idiocy and big ego. And I think both of those things were present here. But there was also serious intention and concerted effort over a period of time to manipulate state by state the results of the election. It just all served a more complex scheme than I thought he was capable of putting together.  

Sarah [00:14:44] One of the key witnesses was Rusty Bowers, the Arizona speaker of the House. He was a very powerful and very compelling witness, and he called it a circus. It is a paradoxically both complex and bumbling. You know, they were, you know, the complexity in the power and the danger of this scheme, all of these campaigns to pressure Mike Pence, to pressure local officials, to pressure the Department of Justice, which we're going to get into in a minute, is not because they were formulated and carried out by Donald Trump. It's because they were formulated and carried out by the President of the United States and just the inherent power and influence and impact of everything the President does, even when the President is a bumbling idiot, which I do believe him to be. I mean, just the ridiculousness of what he was asking people. The absurdity that he would not understand how ridiculous what he was asking people to do, actually, was it's just shocking. And you can hear it in all these officials voices like, I can't do that. You don't understand. I can't do that. And it's like he only knows force. That's the only thing he knows. And you can kind of see it in the way he ran his business. Right? You can just see, like just throw everything at it and see what sticks. This is what this is what this was like. Just throw anything at it and see what sticks. We're going hear in day five, where he literally looks at a Department of Justice official and says, What do I have to lose? Because, his ego is just so individual and it's just driven by Donald Trump. But he wasn't just Donald Trump. He was President of the United States. And I just kept watching this one in particular. He was talking he was calling Rusty Bowers, the speaker of the House. He was calling Raffensperger, the Secretary of State of Georgia. He was calling individual investigators in Georgia. And I thought these people getting phone calls from the President of the United States. At one point somebody said they called and they said, hold for the President. I think I told you, like who hasn't wanted that moment, that West Wing moment hold for the President, but not like this. But it just it it holds such power and such weight, even when it's in service of a completely like simultaneously ridiculous and horrifying plan to overturn the election.  

Beth [00:17:18] And it's just discomforting to think about a President who understands the magnitude of that power, but only in terms of its benefit and never in terms of its responsibility. And that's the story of these hearings. In addition to targeting the state and local election officials, we heard very difficult testimony from Shay Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman, who were just election workers, just workers counting ballots in an election processing center in Georgia.  

Sarah [00:17:54] It was the moment when Ruby Freeman said, I came to help during a pandemic. Like I risked myself to just come because her daughter was the paid official, not her. I just came to help. And this is what happened.  

Beth [00:18:06] And so the President on the advice, it seems, of Rudy Giuliani, who saw a video of them moving ballots. The President individually called them out on the Internet, unleashing just a wave of mob mentality against these two individual American citizens that has left them unable to feel safe in their homes, to go out in public. I mean, it's it is really sad. And again, it goes with that theme of here is a person who was willing to use the weight of his office against anybody for any reason, despite the truth of what he might be saying, with no regard for the truth whatsoever, just to advance his own personal cause.  

Sarah [00:18:53] Yeah, it was just for him. The presidency was for him. And you. It also it stands in such sharp contrast to the way other people on the stand were talking about their oath of office. Rusty Bowers had this moment where he was reading from his journal about his personal faith and beliefs surrounding his oath. The one we wanted to share that.  

Rep. Rusty Bowers [00:19:16] It is painful to have friends who have been such a help to me. Turn on me with such rancor. I may, in the eyes of men, not hold correct opinions or act according to their vision or convictions. But I do not take this current situation in a light manner, a fearful manner, or a vengeful manner. I do not want to be a winner by cheating. I will not play with laws I swore allegiance to. With any contrived desire towards deflection of my deep, foundational desire to follow God's will. As I believe he led my conscience to embrace. How else will I ever approach him in the wilderness of life? Knowing that I ask of this guidance only to show myself a coward. In defending the course he let me take. He led me to take.  

Sarah [00:20:34] You could just hear the weight and how serious he takes his oath. And so to see also the President using his oath to get what he wants, to destroy our institutions, to destroy careers, to threaten ordinary citizens, to destroy their lives, was so incredibly heartbreaking. I mean, Shay Moss and Ruby Freeman's testimony and also like their mother and daughter, the way they were interacting. Every time she would say, I'm her only child, I just I just felt that in my bones, like as an only child. And you just think. And she said it like I'm her only child. And I and I felt like I had brought this to her doorstep. And then Ruby Freeman herself had an incredibly powerful moment during her film testimony.  

Ruby Freeman [00:21:28] There is nowhere I feel safe. Nowhere. Do you know how it feels to have the President of the United States target you? The President of the United States is supposed to represent every American, not to target one. But he targeted me. Lady Ruby, a small business owner, a mother, a proud American citizen who stand up to help Fulton County run an election in the middle of the pandemic.  

Beth [00:22:09] It was striking to me to hear that neither Shay Moss nor Ruby Freeman will ever work an election again. That Shay Moss testified that the workers captured in that video from Fulton County that was circulating, none of them continue to work here. And that's the thing. You listen to Brad Raffensperger and think, who would want this job? You know, who would who would allow themselves to be subjected to this kind of scrutiny? And I'll tell you, I don't think the Internet is helping that in its reaction to these hearings. Because, Rusty Bowers, for example, testified in a way that had a real moral gravitas. And immediately, the effort happens online to show that actually he's not great. That actually he said the day before his testimony that he could vote for Trump again running against a Democrat. You know, that that here are here are the list of reasons that we still think he is not a great guy. And that's okay. There are no perfect witnesses. There are no perfect humans. There are no people with whom we are going to agree on absolutely everything. The point of these hearings is that our system requires us to follow the rules no matter who is in the seat and no matter who we wish to be in the seat, and no matter what we wish of that person or what outcome we're looking for. And I think we could tone it down a little bit on doing to these witnesses what we do way too often in any kind of televised process where we start treating them like celebrities and picking them apart. These are people who, thank goodness, did their civic duty. Was it the bare minimum civic duty? Sure. But that doesn't mean it wasn't hard. This person, this Speaker of the House, who is clearly a deeply religious person, now has trucks that drive through his neighborhood proclaiming that he is a pedophile because he went against the wishes of the President of the United States. He is paying a steep price for doing the bare minimum. And to be honest with you, I watch these hearings and think I'm glad I've never been asked to save democracy. This looks incredibly awful to go through and I don't want to pile on to these people who, unlike a lot of high level people out there, are showing up for these hearings and swearing in oath under penalty of perjury to tell the truth about what happened. They are not cowards. You can say whatever else you want about their lives, but they are not cowards. And we are in a government where too many people have acted with cowardice as they had great power in their hands. So I just I appreciate them. I don't feel any need to do a moral calculus on how what grade we would give them as a person overall. I think that's not helpful.  

Sarah [00:25:00] I think it's counterproductive. The point of these hearings is to convince Republicans, make no mistake, I think everyone should watch them. I think it is essential. But Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger have made it clear we need Republicans to do the right thing. And the way to get Republicans to do the right thing is not stand up and call the Republicans doing the right thing, not good enough. Give me a break. Pay attention to the goal, not how good it makes you feel to dump on Rusty Bowers. I just think what are we trying to do? Is the idea that we will shame every Republican into saying, You're right, I'm so bad I'll stop voting or you're right, I'm so bad I'll become a Democrat until the country is filled with Democrats? Like, I want to play this out. We will still have people in America who have freedom of thought to believe very, very conservative things. And that is okay. It is okay to believe very conservative things. It is not illegal. What it is not okay to do is to believe because you are conservative or Republican or a supporter of Donald Trump, that you have the right to break the law. That's what we're talking about. Unless you want to bring evidence to me that Rusty Bowers or Raffensperger or any other, the conservative people on these hearings have broken the law. And that's why we shouldn't listen to them or evidence that they are violating their oath to tell the truth. Shut your mouth. I don't care. And I don't want to hear about it. Now, I will say this. I take your point about celebrities. However, I do want the celebrities of the world to show up and open their pocketbooks that are deep into everything they can to make Shay Moss and Lady Ruby whole. I want it all. I want Chrissy Teigen giving them a security detail. I want Oprah buying them houses. I want it all. I want America's bounty at their feet to make them whole again. Other than that, I take your point.  

Beth [00:26:57] So that was the fourth hearing. It was a lot. It was very intense. I was very surprised by how much I hadn't known before. I think there's one other issue there worth spending a minute on. Someone ask us about this because it is easy in these hearings to get lost in the details. There's so much coming at you so fast, especially when they do the video montages. These are really well-produced, but like fast, furious with the facts moments.  

Sarah [00:27:23] I mean, they had a whole one on fake electors, which we haven't even really talked about.  

Beth [00:27:27] It's hard to keep up with. So the Fulton County issue, the suitcases of ballots, it was clearly explained in this hearing that what happened was a group of workers were told they could go home for the day, even though the ballots had not all been counted. And thinking they were going home. They grabbed their coats. They put the ballots in these secure ballot boxes as they were supposed to. They rolled those under the table to clean up the workspace because they thought they were leaving for the day. There were no suitcases. Those were like official repositories for legitimate ballots that were supposed to be counted and were being put away to come back and count them the next day. But Georgia election officials outside of that facility got wind, that this facility was not finished and they were closing down and they said, no, thank you, please, everybody needs to get back to work because we're going to finish this as quickly as we can. And the poor supervisor of that facility very much did not want to convey that message, but did. And so people took their coats off and they got the ballots back out of those repositories and they started counting them. You have to watch the entire security footage, video, which they did like 48 hours of it as they investigated this to understand what actually happened there. But there were not conclusively there were not suitcases of illegal ballots brought into this facility. And I thought they did a really nice job walking us through the details of that one, because that just made it around everywhere. And it was confusing.  

Sarah [00:29:02] Well, and listen, what we're going to see at every hearing, what we saw at day two and day three and day four as we sort of pick off these individual conspiracy theories, is that it was not surprisingly, very easy to disprove them. And the reason they weren't easily disproven to the sufficiency of the President is because it wasn't about the proof. One time of my life, my husband looked at me and said, You're trying to reason with idiots and idiots don't understand reason. And I would say people were trying to reason with people who who didn't care about the reason of this. It wasn't about the reason. It was about this is a tool to convince people not to trust the results, which clearly show I lost. And so that's all that matters.  

Beth [00:29:47] So we're going to take a quick break and come back and talk about the fifth hearing.  

Beth [00:30:07] Sarah, I thought the fourth hearing was so, so shocking and emotional and impactful, and it faded from my memory. Today, as we watch the fifth hearing, because this hearing focused on Trump's next effort. So it was kind of like he wanted to win through the Electoral College, and he didn't. And so then he decides, well, let's see if I can go to court and he loses there. And when that door closes, he tries the state legislatures and the fake electors and the Mike Pence issue and the Department of Justice. And so this hearing is about the Department of Justice.  

Sarah [00:30:43] I just can we just take a moment and think about the fact that during this time, you know, this it was, you know, from Election Day to January 6th. So a solid two month time period where he was, you know, doing all these things at once, trying to pressure Mike Pence, trying to replace his attorney general, trying to pressure Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, just all of it all the time that we were still in the middle of a pandemic, that there was still a country to run, that there were still foreign policy crises going on. And he was paying attention to absolutely none of them, because this is what he clearly did all day, every day. The shocking moment was that they started to call Jeffrey Clark in the call logs, acting attorney general, even though he was decidedly not. The other shocking part is he was calling him like every 5 minutes. He's the President of the United States of America. And he was spending all day, every day on this.  

Beth [00:31:45] And we are living the results of that now, obviously. So the headline for me of this hearing is that all Trump wanted from the Department of Justice was like enough of a suggestion using the credibility of the DOJ, which includes the FBI. Right? He just wanted the credibility of federal law enforcement to say there could be a problem here so that Congress could take that and run with it.  

Sarah [00:32:15] Can I? Get something off my chest? 

Beth [00:32:18] You clearly need to.  

Sarah [00:32:19] You know where he learned that? 2016. That's where he learned that. We all learn that. Stand up and say there's an investigation. It's enough. It's part of the how he won the first time. So why wouldn't it be part of the way he won the second? Won using that term very loosely.  

Beth [00:32:34] I don't want to relitigate 2016 today, but I will say that what connects with me to 2016 about what we heard today is that it is entirely consistent with the character he displayed in the debates during that election to just keep hammering away at his point, hoping that the hammering will work right? I remember him in the debate, just like physically leaning in to the podium saying the same thing over and over. No matter what the question was, no matter what the retort had been, he just thinks, if I say it loud enough and long enough and in a catchy enough way, someone will say yes to me. And honestly, I could take that back to my days of watching The Apprentice. People who did well on that show were people who were willing in the boardroom moments to pound the table enough for him to be like, You're pretty relentless about this. You win. I mean, that's just how he's always operated. And so what we heard today was entirely consistent with his character. It's still really surprised me.  

Sarah [00:33:38] Yeah. I mean, he at one point tells the officials at the Department of Justice just say it's corrupt. Me and the Republican congressmen will do the rest. And it's important to note that not only do we have a lot of really impactful testimony from Jeffrey Rosen, Assistant Attorney General Steven Engel, like these are, again, lifelong conservatives, lifelong Republicans up there saying he just we would say we can't do it on this day and do it anyway. Why won't you do your job? And so we get to this this culmination moment where there's a meeting of all these White House attorneys, department officials coming in and he's saying, I'm going to replace Jeffrey Rosen on Jeffrey Clark. Jeffrey Clark is completely and totally unqualified to run the Department of Justice. He has never run a criminal investigation. He has never been in criminal trial. He has never been before a jury or a grand jury. It's absurd. And they're all telling him this and to the point like it's a mass resignation. If you try to replace Jeffrey with Jeffrey, we will all quit. But. Throughout this, emphasized repeatedly by Representative Kinzinger, is that there were United States House of Representatives all up in this plan. Representative Perry brought Jeffrey Clark to the White House. Representative. There was at one point where they put together a video package where you hear all these representatives saying the DOJ won't do anything, the DOJ won't do their job. And then, of course, we wrap up at the end with a specific sworn testimony from Mark Meadows' assistant, saying These are the representatives who asked for a pardon. And it was, it was an incredible moment and ended with Representitive Kinzinger saying you only ask for a pardon if you think you've broken the law.  

Beth [00:35:28] I think it might be helpful to set the scene a little bit more if you're hearing these names and are like, Wait, what? So where we are as this hearing begins, the testimony we're jumping into, Bill Barr has resigned. Bill Barr has come out and said, I did everything I could to run to ground every theory of how Donald Trump could still be the president.  

Sarah [00:35:49] And he's really been the star of talk, particularly of day two of the hearings.  

Beth [00:35:52] And I couldn't find anything. And I told the President so and then I told the country so. And he has resigned. And so Jeff Rosen is now the acting Attorney General. And Jeff Rosen is on the same page with Bill Barr. We have investigated thoroughly. We devoted resources to this. We devoted time to it. We looked at it. There is not a crime here for us to prosecute, and there is nothing that we see that would change the outcome of the election. Richard Donoghue is a deputy and so the two of them are sitting atop the Department of Justice on the daily getting calls from the White House with new ideas, including things like being forwarded from Mark Meadows, a YouTube video.  

Sarah [00:36:36] I couldn't I almost had to throw my phone in a pool. I could not with that watching Donahue, who was in the military, took careful notes. So he got all these crazy notes saying, I spent 20 minutes watching the Italy software guy on YouTube. And then they wanted him to talk to the guy in the YouTube video. They wanted the acting attorney general to talk to the guy in the YouTube video. I just.  

Beth [00:37:05] So they're just getting the onslaught of pressure to find something and they keep being told, just say there's a problem. Just give us the appearance of a problem so that we can run with it with our friends in Congress and members of Congress are getting involved. And that's where Scott Perry, Republican Representative from Pennsylvania, plucks this environmental lawyer, Jeff Clark, out of obscurity. 

Sarah [00:37:31] I need more information on that. Where'd he come from?  

Beth [00:37:32] I have lots and lots of questions about this, but he plucks him out of obscurity. This guy has nothing to do with crime. He has nothing to do with elections.  

Sarah [00:37:40] He's an environmental lawyer. 

Beth [00:37:40] And says, he's our guy. This is the guy who who will do what we want. And Jeff Clark writes a letter that he wants to send to Georgia state legislature and he tries to get Rosen to sign this letter and Rosen will not do it. And Jeff  Clark says, well, the President has offered me your job. And Rosen said hilariously, I was not about to be fired by my subordinate. But Clark says you could keep your job if you'll sign this letter. So it is all really, really surprising to hear, even though at the time we heard like people are threatening to resign. I did not understand until today that there was a plan for everyone to resign and then that the downstream effects of DOJ leadership resigning could have meant, as they testified today, hundreds of United States attorneys across the country resigning within a matter of 72 hours.  

Sarah [00:38:38] And then there's this moment where Donoghue goes back and says, okay, wait. I want to clarify that there was an assistant attorney general on the call who offered to resign, and we said, No, you have to stay because you're in charge of national security, and that's more important. And I thought, well, I'm glad somebody was paying attention to that. I'm glad somebody understood the priorities and the United States government, because the other moment where I just was dumbfounded is, you know, they have this meaning where he's trying to replace him. It goes on for two and a half hours. 90 minutes after that meeting, Donahue gets a call from the President with another ridiculous election fraud story, another phone call with another theory. And then they go to the events of January 6th. They ask Acting Attorney General Rosen, they asked Deputy Attorney General Donahue, did you hear from the president? On January 6th. Did you talk to the President on January 6th? No. And Donahue went there, went to the crypt to see to secure the capital on the ground. Did you talk to the president? No, but he did something that YouTube link, because as he says at one point, I just I think I follow the Internet more than you guys. I just I it's again, horrifying. Horrifying.  

Beth [00:40:04] So I thought that Representative Kinzinger, who led this hearing, was remarkably effective and summed it up quite well.  

Rep. Adam Kinzinger [00:40:15] The Justice Department lawyers are not the President's personal lawyers. We count on them to be on the side of the law and to defend the best interests of the United States, not the best interest of any political campaign. That's how it's been since the department was founded soon after the Civil War. Justice Department lawyers are supposed to play it 100% straight. President Trump tried to erase his loss at the ballot box by parachuting an unqualified man into the top job at Justice. It was a power play to win at all costs, with no regard for the will of the American people. It was about ignoring millions of votes. Ignore them, throw them out, label them fraudulent, corrupt, illegal, whatever. Facts were clearly just an inconvenience. From the Oval Office, President Trump urged others to bring his big lie to life. He begged. Just say the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressmen. He didn't care what the department's investigations proved. What good were facts when they would only confirm his loss? And it's no surprise that all the far out, fully fabricated whack job conspiracy theories collapsed under even the slightest scrutiny. That insanity went from the Internet to the highest levels of government in no time. The bottom line the most senior leadership of the Justice Department from Attorney General Bill Barr to Jeff Rosen, his successor, and his deputy, Rich Donoghue. Everyone except Jeff Clark was telling President Trump the very same thing. The conspiracy theories were false. The allegation of a stolen election was a lie. The data left no room for doubt. Nothing to question. And the Constitution left no room for President Trump to change the outcome of the election. But we're here today because the facts were irrelevant to President Trump. It was about protecting his very real power and very fragile ego, even if it required recklessly undermining our in our entire electoral system by wildly casting baseless doubt upon it. In short, he was willing to sacrifice our Republic to prolong his Presidency. I can imagine no more dishonorable act by a President. We owe a great debt of gratitude to these men you've heard from here today. Real leaders who stood for justice when it was in grave peril. Who put their country first when the leader of the free world demanded otherwise, they threatened to resign rather than corrupt our democracy. And thanks largely to each of them President Trump's coup failed. Contrast that to Jeff Clark, who would do exactly what the President wanted. Say there was massive fraud. Forget the facts and leave the rest to President Trump's congressional friends. Mr. Clark refused to cooperate with this committee. He pled the fifth over 125 times. Why risk self-incrimination? And President Trump's congressional friends, some of them are angling for pardons. They knew that every bit of what they did was a lie and it was wrong. That's all the more reason to respect those who came here to testify today. We thank them for their unflinching service in the face of incredible pressure. As it said, the only thing necessary for evil to succeed is good men to do nothing. Thankfully, there were good people in the Department of Justice. You heard from other good people, too, on Tuesday. They too, defended us. But I'm still worried that not enough has changed to prevent this from happening again. The oath that we take has to mean something. It Has to cut to the core of who we are and be the driving force of our service to this nation. We on this committee, we may be able to shine light on the darkness, but that is not enough. It's now up to every American, now and in the future to stand for truth, to reject the lies wherever we confront them in our towns and our capitals and our friendships and our families and at the ballot box. And within our own minds and hearts.  

Sarah [00:44:54] And then to our point. And the previous hearing. Representative Cheney knows who she's talking to. She had an incredibly powerful moment at the end of the hearing.  

Rep. Liz Cheney [00:45:05] Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. And I again want to thank the witnesses for being here today. After today, I suspect that there will be some who label you agents of the Deep State or something else, conspiratorial or nonsensical, meant to justify ignoring what you said today, ignoring the facts. That may be the short term cost of acting honorably and telling the truth. But your actions should have an important long term impact. They will help keep us on the course set by the framers of our Constitution. Let me paraphrase the words of John Adams and others. Whether ours shall continue to be a government of laws and not of men is ultimately for the American people to decide. And let me also today make a broader statement to millions of Americans who put their trust in Donald Trump, in these hearings so far, you've heard from more than a dozen Republicans who told you what actually happened in the weeks before January 6th. You will hear from more in the hearings to come. Several of them serve Donald Trump in his administration, others in his campaign. Others have been conservative Republicans for their entire careers. It can be difficult to accept that President Trump abused your trust, that he deceived you. Many will invent excuses to ignore that fact. But that is a fact. I wish it weren't true, but it is.  

Beth [00:46:38] I would like to add something to Representative Cheney's remarks, if I may.  

Sarah [00:46:41] Mm hmm. You can recognize yourself without objection.  

Beth [00:46:46] I understand that there is pretty widespread dissatisfaction with the Biden administration from people like me who had had been Republicans and are either voting across the aisle or become independents or have registered as Democrats because of all of this. Right? I understand that people like me have a number of criticisms of the current president. I have some, too. What I never worry about with Joe Biden, is whether there are active conversations about breaking the law. Now. I could be proven wrong some day. And perhaps there are members of Congress texting with the current chief of staff saying, I sent you this on signal. Right. Like some of what we've seen. It is meaningful to me to have a President who I think fundamentally respects the rule of law. I disagree with a number of his strategic and operational and tactical decisions across a broad range of issues. I'd be happy to talk with you about them sometime, but I never think to myself, Would Joe Biden lose an election and stay in the White House? Would Joe Biden call the Secretary of State of Georgia and say, I need you to find me 11,000 votes? I just never worry about that. And with Trump, this has been a certainty from the beginning. And he is telling us now that it's exactly what he would do again. And I just don't want to lose sight of the big picture. It is not that I think the criticisms I have of President Biden are inconsequential. I don't I think they're highly consequential. They do not rise to this level of blatant corruption. And that matters. And that's why every time I read that these hearings aren't going to matter in the midterms. I want to throw things. It shouldn't matter that Republican members of Congress were participating in a scheme to break the law, that Republican members of Congress were coordinating in a conspiracy to break the law and deny the people of the United States their chosen President. That's unacceptable. And the way that Joe Biden is handling Afghanistan, gas prices, corona virus, you name it, cannot to me rise to this level of corruption.  

Sarah [00:49:25] So we have more hearings. The Congress is on recess until July 12th. We do not know the schedule once they return from recess, but we will be there. Me apparently from across the ocean. Thanks a lot, Benny and Liz. And we'll be following along with the hearings once they resume.  

Beth [00:49:50] We always end our show talking about something Outside of politics because we think it's really important to be whole people are always not entirely consumed with politics. And despite the fact that we sent our kids to summer camp this week with the expectation that we might be able to focus solely on politics and work this week, that that is not been the case. Sarah, I want to talk about this carefully because this is kind of morbid, I guess, but I think all the time about like, if I die tomorrow, what will Jane and Ellen, my two daughters hear in our recorded episodes or read in our books or see on social media and think of their mother, who will they know me to be if I disappeared from their lives through all of this stuff that I have created with you? And so I want to talk about this carefully. The upshot is that my older daughter, Jane, is at sleepaway camp for the first time, along with my younger daughter Ellen. 

Sarah [00:50:49] And mine.  

Beth [00:50:50] And Sarah's kids. And and Jane has wanted to come home and has called me several times to let me know that. And they have been very intense calls. And so I thought we could talk about, like, my part of it, not her part of it, because I think this is a dilemma that parents face all the time. Your kid starts playing a sport and wants to quit. Your kid goes to summer camp and wants to come home. I think six months from now I will be like, This was totally obvious. What to do here was totally obvious to just tell her, No, you got to stay. And that is what I have done. It has felt like garbage. This week I have felt sick and exhausted and on the verge of tears all week.  

Sarah [00:51:34] I know I had such good plans. I thought I was such a genius when I thought we would send our children off to sleep away camp for the week. Of course. Then mine got diabetes, so. And I had to drive him 10 hours and back to a camp where he's actually he's in Cleveland. So he is in Cleveland. Hours are about 10 minutes. The rest. My two boys and your girls are about 10 minutes away. I don't know if that makes it better or worse in the end. I think that I was once in a therapy session and I was upset that my children, one child, I think it was Amos, I was telling a story about how he was crying. And it really upset me. My therapist said, Do you think he should never cry or be upset? Do you think he should never face hard things? And I said. How dare you? And then I said, Of course not, but they should be in the manner that I have carefully prescribed and scheduled and pre-approved. I'm not like that. It's not like that. I'd like to have preparation when my kids do go through hard thing. I'd like to have a plan in place where my kids go through hard things. I would like to know, all right, like this is what I do. It's the right thing. I want to design a system, but it is truly wretched where you just have to think, okay, I think I'm doing the right thing. But it feels terrible. I have been under the impression that doing the right thing is supposed to feel amazing.  

Beth [00:53:01] It is not felt amazing. But I do believe in my heart, in my gut, in my head that it is important for kids to struggle sometimes. And I would rather have my daughter struggle in the context of an amazing summer camp.  

Sarah [00:53:21] 100 foot waterslide, gaga ball.  

Beth [00:53:23] We're there. There are tons and tons of caring adults around to assist in that struggle. Then in the kinds of situations that life will create for her, no matter how hard I try to plan otherwise. And so I've been pretty adamant. I have had moments of having to be pretty firm. I hung up one on one one of our calls before she was ready to say goodbye. It's been pretty awful, but, I do think it is important to allow allow her to feel the pride of finishing what she started. If she never wants to go back, that's okay. But I want her to know that she can struggle and get through something and make it to the end of it and be proud of the person that she is on the other side. And I think the most effective conversation I had with her was the last one I had with her, knock on wood, I hope not to speak with her again until I pick her up. I hope.  

Sarah [00:54:21] I have not heard anything today.  

Beth [00:54:22] We have not heard anything today and I feel good about that. So I think the most effective discussion I had with her was saying, I want you to trust yourself and trust that you can do hard things and that you can enjoy hard things. And honestly, that skill is, to me, the most important one that I have as a person in 2022. To still, to do this job where we are immersed in hard things constantly and trying to figure out what to say about hard things constantly. The skill to still be able to enjoy my life. In the midst of all that and to see good and to have moments of fun and lightness, that's the most important skill I've got. And so I hope that if anything ever happens to me and Jane hears this. She knows that's the gift I want to give her.  

Sarah [00:55:10] Well, and I think that you've done a very good job of affirming. It's very difficult to affirm how kids feel because you hear it all as an adult. So many adults don't trust their own voices and it's so important. And we have to you know, we have to believe in ourselves and trust ourselves, follow our passions and follow our path and. It feels as a parent. Sometimes when people talk like that, like all parents can do is mess that up, like, oh, he can do it. Like at every turn. It's inevitable that we're going to, you know, strip that childlike wonder and confidence right out of their bones. And it is hard it is hard to affirm how your children feel. And also. Give them the tools and the confidence and sometimes just the opportunity because they have neither the tools or the confidence. And the opportunity has to build the tools and the confidence. To go out and do it. And it's I think you've walked that very narrow path. Well, because it is hard to say. I hear you. I'm not arguing that you are sad. I am not arguing that you don't feel good. I'm not arguing that you're homesick. I think you are all of those things. You can trust yourself when you feel those things and also, you know, wisdom and growth and integration. Does it come from following every emotion or every discomfort? Right. It comes from interpreting those and understanding how to listen to yourself and then make the right response instead of just reacting every time.  

Beth [00:56:44] Yeah, that's that's what I've tried to do. Thank you. And the support of other people has been really important to me this week. That's the other thing I wanted to mention. I think sometimes we feel like we have to parent alone. I have really needed Chad. I've needed you have needed my mom. I've needed some friends of mine. I called my friend Brian and told him what happened. He had 6 minutes before our meeting and he said, Beth, if if you had called me and presented these facts to me and said, What should I do? I would have recited back to you exactly what you've done. And it meant the world to me. And I just am so thankful that I have learned to allow people to help me when I'm struggling. And I think I hope that's another skill that camp provides, that here are all these people around who can help me through this struggle and help me find the fun and the path forward on the other side. So it's been a much harder week than I thought it was going to be, but isn't that always the case? Well, thank you all for joining us. As we know, you have multiple hard things happening in your worlds. We know it's a big ask to care about the entirety of democracy when you are dealing with hard things in your life. But but we can all do that. We have those we have those skills and those abilities. And Lord knows the opportunity. We will be back with you next Tuesday, probably talking about the Supreme Court. We have a hunch between now and then have the best weekend available to you.  

Beth [00:58:19] Pantsuit Politics is produced by Studio D Podcast Production. Alise Napp is our managing director.

Sarah Maggie Penton is our community engagement manager. Dante Lima is the composer and performer of our theme music.  

Beth Our show is listener-supported. Special thanks to our executive producers. 

Executive Producers (Read their own names) Martha Bronitsky, Ali Edwards, Janice Elliot, Sarah Greenup, Julie Haller, Helen Handley, Tiffany Hassler, Emily Holladay, Katie Johnson, Katina Zuganelis Kasling, Barry Kaufman, Molly Kohrs. The Kriebs, Laurie LaDow, Lilly McClure, Jared Minson, Emily Neesley, The Pentons, Tawni Peterson, Tracy Puthoff, Sarah Ralph, Jeremy Sequoia, Katy Stigers, Karin True, Onica Ulveling, Nick and Alysa Vilelli, Katherine Vollmer, Amy Whited. 

Beth Melinda Johnston, Ashley Thompson, Jeff Davis, Michelle Wood, Joshua Allen, Morgan McHugh, Nichole Berklas, Paula Bremer, and Tim Miller.

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