Thursday night, the first public House committee hearing on the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol laid out the first findings of what happened leading up to and on the day of the riots.
While previous ground was retread, much of the testimony and video was new to both the public and the media reporting on what happened. One of those in the media that has followed the aftermath of January 6th is Chief Washington correspondent for CBS News Major Garrett.
Garrett, a regular Friday guest with Chad Hartman on WCCO Radio, says there is information coming out in these hearings that Americans need to pay attention to.
“I know that there are people who support President Trump, former President Trump, who think that this is overkill, who think that this is hyping something that is being misconstrued or used for political purposes,” Garrett told WCCO. “And there's an old phrase that I think is instructive. It's much easier to fool someone than to convince someone that they have been fooled. And that's the position we find ourselves in with about a third of our country who doesn't want to come to grips with the truth that they have been fooled.”
Garrett goes on to say that the committee presented much of their information from people who were inside Donald Trump’s “inner-circle”.
“The committee last night relied on voices that are not outsiders,” said Garrett. “It relied on voices intimate to President Trump's final days in office who surrounded him, by his own choice, as trusted insiders, people from his campaign, people from his cabinet-level agencies, people from the very departments he placed them in to give him the most candid, truthful advice. So he could make decisions as President of the United States. And we heard over and over again, them say the same thing. The Election was not rigged. It was not stolen. There was no evidence, the president lost. And yet they were not powerful enough within the Trump White House to do anything about what happened.”
Garrett explained that despite these warnings from his inner-circle, the president was listening to people that lied to him.
“Then, to have him repeat that lie to the country, and mobilize lots of Americans who thought it was impossible that Donald Trump lost, to bring them to the nation's capital in order to stop something that many of them believed, legitimately in the moment, should have been stopped. They are, as the committee said and will underscore in future testimony, among the myriad victims of this monstrous, malignant and premeditated lie.”
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Rep. Liz Cheney (WY), one of two Republicans on the committee, claimed multiple Republican members of Congress sought presidential pardons in the days after the riot at the Capitol, including Rep. Scott Perry (PA). Perry has declined to comply with committee subpoenas.
"Multiple other Republican congressmen also sought presidential pardons for their roles in attempting to overturn the 2020 election," Cheney said.
She did not name the other Republicans. When asked why these Republican lawmakers would seek a pardon, if they were indeed just seeking the truth about Election fraud as they claimed, Garrett said there have been denials about that already.
“I believe the committee and Liz Chaney, who said these words, would never have said them if they didn't have, as the kids like to say, the receipts,” Garrett predicts. “So the receipts will be forthcoming. The proof will be there. Either texts or emails or phone calls or testimony will suggest and notify the country of who was seeking a pardon.”
Garrett also explains a few of the reasons why some may have been asking for a pardon.
“You would seek it if you believe you are in some way, possibly exposed to charges under federal law,” Garrett told Hartman. “Federal law meaning obstructing a congressional proceeding, which a member of Congress would know is against the law. Or conspiring to subvert an election, or other things that are applicable under federal law.”
For those seeking that pardon, Garrett says their loyalty was misguided and there is ample evidence that that loyalty was never going to be returned by the president.
“They're discovering the same thing that lots of people who are in jail, in the District of Columbia and other jurisdictions, have learned who came to Washington under the belief, misguided unfortunately, that their president would never lie to him,” said Garrett. “And if he did lie to them, he would certainly help them out in their moment of distress. He is not, and he never will. Nope. They got the same. He moves on short end of the stick everyone gets when they deal directly with the loyalty question. And which direction it runs when we're dealing with the former president. It runs in one direction and one direction only. The record on that, ladies and gentlemen, is absolutely clear.”
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