I love the old Perry Mason show where trials would end with spectacular confessions by the guilty, after Perry Mason perfectly sets the stage for same. If this was that old legal show from the 1960’s, the brilliant clarity of Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony before Congress today would be the lead in to the confession of the criminal, which in this case is Mark Meadows. One of the criminals I should say.
Meadows gave up. He was inattentive, eyes glazed over, seemingly numb and definitely non responsive while the riot was building to a crescendo. He could not do his job. He had reached the end of the road.
This particular road to ruin started out on Election Night 2020. An inebriated Rudy Giuliani opined that Donald Trump should simply lie and claim that he won the election. Meadows objected, saying that it was “irresponsible” — to say the least. But Trump decided to go along with it.
Two things happened that night and probably more, as we will find out in the fullness of time. One, Trump decided to pull out all the stops and two, Meadows, finding himself outnumbered and overruled by the crazies, essentially abdicated his position that night. From then on, he was along for the ride, he wasn’t driving the car.
One of the things that Cassidy Hutchinson said today was that the sequence of events was “like watching a bad car wreck about to happen. You want to do something to stop it.” I know exactly what she means and I know a lot of other people who know what she means. Time does crazy stuff at moments like that. It slows down. You see every nanosecond with great clarity as you lose control and you see the awfulness coming.
I lost control of a mobilette in France. That is a bicycle with a small engine attached. It’s not a motorcycle by any wild stretch of the imagination, it puts along at maybe 10mph.
I was lucky. I knew as I flew through the air that my head was going to clear the concrete of the ditch by about six inches — and it did. I also realized later that if it didn’t, that that would have been the last image that I would ever have seen on this earth. These moments in a disaster are moments of clarity. And I have traded war stories like these with others and we all report the same phenomena.
Mark Meadows may have had such a moment of clarity, but he didn’t have enough of one to resign on the spot. That would have gotten him off the hook.
Instead, he elected to hang around until the bitter end. If you missed the clips about Meadows being in a “haze” and non-responsive to Pat Cipollone who was trying to galvanize him into action, hit the link. Three minutes will paint the scene for you, in graphic detail.
Meadows could not be galvanized because he knew he was not in control. And he knew that Trump was out of control. Richard Nixon was drinking too much during Watergate and talking to portraits of dead presidents on the walls. He also asked Henry Kissinger to drop to his knees and pray with him in the Lincoln bedroom. That is not normal, perhaps, but it’s not the same as smashing your lunch dishes into the wall or grabbing your Secret Service man by the throat.
Meadows knew he was beaten January 6 and his only thought was saving his own skin. He and Giuliani both had the same thought at the same time. They suddenly became concerned about their complicity in the events at the Capitol that resulted in nine people dead, including four police officers who died from suicide. This was an American tragedy that did not need to happen. Not any of it.
Trump was also diddling with the idea of pardoning the Capitol rioters but did not pardon them, nor his chief of staff, nor his consigliere. Trump now talks about pardoning the rioters during his MAGA rallies.
Events got beyond Mark Meadows. That happens in life sometimes. And it’s happened to better men than Mark Meadows. I saw events overtake Lyndon Johnson back in the Vietnam, causing him not to run for another term.
We don’t know at this time if Meadows will be asked to testify. But if he were to testify and do so truthfully, it would shine a spotlight on what was uncovered today. I have two thoughts: 1) Meadows is too afraid to testify truthfully but 2) Meadows is not going to go to prison for Donald Trump, as I’ve said many times.
Denver Riggleman, a former GOP Rep. said this to Nicolle Wallace today, about Meadows: “I want to be very careful in how I say this, Nicolle. I said Mark Meadows was the MVP of the committee of the investigation. Today, I think we see Mark Meadows is the Rosetta Stone of the investigation. He was sort of the pivot man for everything happening between these groups and up to the president.”
Pivot man, Rosetta Stone. I have used the word “linchpin” on numerous occasions. It will be interesting to see what happens next. I would love a Perry Mason-esque confession from Meadows but would certainly be willing to settle for a lot less.
He doesn’t need to testify to the J6 cmte to avoid prison, but he does need a deal from the DOJ. At the very least (I am not a lawyer, but I am a retired police sergeant so I have some grounding in criminal law), he’s an accomplice before, during and after. He was aware of what the crazies were planning and did nothing to thwart the plan or alert the authorities. Since DOJ hasn’t indicted him for obstruction of congress they are looking at more serious charges. If he has a Trump approved attorney, he’s f*cked. The fact that he gave up some documents to the committee earlier makes me think he hired his own lawyer, so he should be “singing”.
When multiple people are involved in a crime(s) and the authorities are closing in or have already made arrests their lawyers work like hell to find out how good the case is. If it’s solid then it becomes a race to see who gives up the most and best information first, and perhaps in a huge case sweetheart deals are available for more than one person. In this instance Meadows’ lawyer and other lawyers for other key players have been much more in the dark than they would like to have been. But they have to have been worried.
They had every reason to believe all those staffers who made up the bulk of those “thousand witnesses” and their records & testimony were going to have them swimming in a world of shit. Meadows is I agree the linchpin in all this. He more than anyone else on team Trump knows both where the bodies are buried and just as important who can bury those who buried the bodies! I’m pretty sure the Committee has him dead to rights and that’s why the DOJ has been kicking up a fuss. They want all that evidence the Committee has collected so they can start turning up the heat with indictments – something in many cases they can’t ask a grand jury to do without having written transcripts out there that haven’t been presented.
It looks like at this point Meadows has “cooperated” all he intends to. And if the DOJ is chomping at the bit perhaps what we saw today was a very strong message not just to the country but to Meadows himself that if he wants to stay out of prison, or at least serve the minimum of time in a lower level security prison it’s time to cut his deal. As for Pat Cippilone I’m sure he’s a good enough lawyer to have well-covered his own ass legally and I think what’s driven him insane is trying to figure out how to save something of what was once a promising and richly (literally) rewarding legal career at some tony conservative law firm. However, like the character Richard Dreyfuss played in The Goodbye Girl the night before the play opened. Marsha Mason’s character hears him frantically stomping around reciting lines and is stunned when she walks in on him in full costume – made up to be as gay as the director’s mind could conceive. His response to her query was a shouted “I’m trying to figure out how to save my career!” That’s been Cippilone. If I were Don McGahan, the dude who roped him into his gig at the WH I’d do all I could to never be within a thousand yards of Cippilone.
I think you’re wrong. I think Meadows was in on the planning and coordination with the Proud Boys up to his neck! Those two times he shut Cassidy out of the car, he was on the phone and wanted no one to know who he was talking to or what he was saying. My guess is that he was talking to a leader of the Proud Boys, helping to coordinate the timing of their actions with the timing of Trump’s speech. After all, they had started marching to the capitol before Trump’s speech ever begain, in order to begin clearing a way for the mob. That’s why Meadows asked Cassidy at some point how much time was remaining in Trump’s speech. He was helping the Proud Boys on the timng of their first attack on the barracades.
That’s precisely what I was thinking, Daisy, as the brave and articulate Cass Hutchinson told us that Meadows was concealing his phone calls from his limo. He was talking to the storm troopers Trump and he had enlisted to breach the Capitol for the mob. And if he was dumb enough to do so on his own phone, rather than a burner, then those records are available for the DOJ and the J6 committee.