"Stunning" is a powerful word, but still does not adequately describe the revelations in the June 28 session of the U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee investigating the events related to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C.
First, there was the testimony of a very brave 25-year-old woman who may turn out to be this scandal's equivalent of John Dean, the White House counsel/whistleblower who broke the Watergate investigation wide open nearly 50 years ago.
Cassidy Hutchinson, a former senior assistant to Mark Meadows, Donald Trump's chief of staff, described a litany of actions--ranging from merely questionable and stupid to clearly illegal--by Trump, Meadows, and other White House officials and Trump advisers during the days leading up to Jan. 6, the fateful date itself, and its aftermath. Among her accounts were:
• Trump delayed the start of his rally near the White House the day of the insurrection because he was unhappy with the size of the crowd, and ordered the Secret Service to speed up the admission process by stopping the use of metal detectors to screen attendees, despite having been told that a number of people trying to get in were carrying firearms or other weapons and wearing body armor.
He wanted those who were armed to be able to leave the rally and go directly to the Capitol. "I don't even care that they have weapons. They're not here to hurt me," he said.
• Despite many (including myself) who doubted Trump's claim he intended to accompany marchers from the rally to the Capitol, he did, indeed, plan to go, and became furious when the head of his Secret Service detail ordered the presidential motorcade to return to the White House after the rally because of security concerns. Hutchinson was told that first Trump reached into the front seat to grab the vehicle's steering wheel, and when the agent tried to remove his hand from the wheel, the president of the United States then grasped his lead Secret Service agent's throat with his free hand and tried to choke him.
• Like a 2-year-old who didn't get his way, Trump hurled his lunch plate against the wall in his private dining area, leaving a trail of ketchup dripping down the wall, after Attorney General William Barr delivered a report prior to Jan. 6 that the Justice Department had been unable to document any of the made-up claims by Trump and his true believers that the 2020 election had been stolen.
• Hours after the Capitol assault started, White House Counsel Pat Cipollone finally convinced Meadows to go to Trump in an attempt have him make a public statement to call off the rioters, who'd been heard shouting, "Hang Mike Pence." Trump told them that his vice president deserved to be hanged.
• A number of Trump insiders, including Meadows, private counsel Rudy Giuliani, and some members of Congress, expressed an interest in receiving pardons for their actions attempting to overturn the 2020 election results.
She described many more incidents, too numerous to summarize here. Many of the events she witnessed herself. Others, admittedly, were secondhand accounts, but it was a massive amount of evidence.
I've spent enough time in courtrooms over the years to know there is a difference between evidence and proof, but Hutchinson impressed me as being very credible. Evidently, she struck at least one nerve: Trump was watching her televised testimony and posting social media denials in real time.
She was under oath; he was not.
In addition to Hutchinson's testimony, the committee revealed that some witnesses have been contacted by unnamed (though not necessarily unknown) persons in rather thinly disguised attempts to influence their testimony. The committee chair openly appealed to any other witnesses or potential witnesses who have received similar messages to come forward.
Would you like ketchup with your obstruction of justice?
Finally, the committee played snippets of the videotaped testimony of Michael Flynn, briefly Trump's national security adviser at the start of his term, who later pleaded guilty to making false statements to the FBI in what's known as the "Russia Probe." Trump subsequently pardoned Flynn.
During his testimony to the committee, Flynn was asked whether he thought there was either moral or legal justification for the assault on the Capitol. He invoked the Fifth Amendment and did not answer. He was then asked whether he believed in the principle of a peaceful transfer of power in the United States following an election. Once again, he took the Fifth.
Incredibly, there are still millions of Americans who want Trump and his posse returned to power. Again, "stunning" is simply not strong enough a word to describe some things.
Doug Szenher lives in Little Rock.