Today is Thursday, June 23, 2022. Today the fifth day of hearings from the January 6 select committee shed considerable new light on former president Dumpf’s attempts to weaponize the Justice Department in the final months of his term as part of his diabolical plot to overturn the 2020 election and stay in power. Boy, did the American people get an earful from three Justice Department officials who fought against the president’s scheme to plunge the country into a Constitutional crisis of massive proportions. Just when you thought you believed the ex-president was a scumbag anyway, there’s more reasons to call him something worse after all of these hearings are over. Today an online CNN article provides us “5 takeaways from the fifth day of January 6 hearings” written by Marshall Cohen, Jeremy Herb, and Zachary Cohen. The revelations are explosive, by any measure of the word.

The hearing actually kicked off after federal investigators – finally – raided the home of one Jeffrey Clark, who was one of the key Justice Department figures who was up to his neck in Dumpf’s illegal schemes. So far, he has denied any wrongdoing related to January 6, but the Department will be able to turn the screws on him to most assuredly get him to talk – most probably incentivize him to rat on the big cheese, “Don Corleone” Dumpf.

The witnesses today were former acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, his deputy Richard Donoghue, and Steven Engel, who led the department’s Office of Legal Counsel. These Dumpf-appointed officials are all Republican, so there cannot be any chastising of the committee for being partisan. Republicans should be very afraid right now!

One of the takeaways from today’s session is that the select committee has the goods on who in the repugnican party knew they were committing illegal acts and desired pardons from the mobster president before he was exiting the White House. One of those favoring a pardon before it was too late was Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania who connected Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark to the White House in December 2020. He wanted Mr. Clark to take over the Department of Justice, according to former aide Cassidy Hutchinson to Dumpf’s Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, who testified to this point in a clip of her deposition that was played at today’s hearing. Other deplorable Congressmen who did ask for a pardon are Mo Brooks of Alabama, Andy Biggs of Arizona, Louie Gohmert of Texas, Matt Gaetz of Florida, and possibly, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia. As you would expect, some of these craven lawmakers denied ever asking for pardons, even though there is definite evidence of Mo Brooks asking for a pardon as well as Scott Perry, even though the latter vehemently denied asking for one.

Pursuant to this request for blanket pardons obtained in an email from Mo Brooks, it was requested by Brooks that the president pardon the following groups of people, which included the names of “every congressman and senator who voted to reject the electoral college vote submissions of Arizona and Pennsylvania,” which could involve the participation of about 147 people. That’s a hell of a lot of pardons there! The Tiger King was more deserving of a presidential pardon than these traitors to the Constitution.

The lead member conducting today’s hearing was Rep. Adam Kinzinger who has been largely ostracized by the Republican conference for his role on the January 6 committee. But he had the last word this afternoon when he said this to the cowards seeking pardons for their transgressions: “My colleagues up here also take an oath. Some of them failed to uphold theirs and instead chose to spread the big lie.”

Another major takeaway was the revelation of a high-stakes Oval Office meeting in December 2020, where the mobster of a president considered firing the acting attorney general and installing Clark, who was willing to use the powers of federal law enforcement to encourage state lawmakers to overturn Dumpf’s huge loss. Now we heard from some of those officials who were in the room when Clark’s name was suggested as replacing the acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen. Fortunately, this action was not taken when Dumpf was told there would be mass resignations at the Justice Department if he replaced Rosen with Clark.

Trump White House lawyer Eric Herschmann said Clark was repeatedly “clobbered over the head” during the meeting. Herschmann bluntly told the committee that he called Clark a “fucking asshole” and said his plans would have been illegal. He also said Clark’s plan to send letters to battleground states was “nuts.”

The deputy attorney general Richard Donoghue was overheard saying in videotaped testimony that was played today that he eviscerated Clark’s credentials during the meeting, explaining that Clark was woefully underqualified to serve as attorney general. Obviously, the only qualification in this president’s mind for making him attorney general was his absolute fealty to his maniacal plot to overturn the 2020 election.

A startling takeaway from today’s hearing was how Dumpf pushed the highest levels of government to investigate conspiracy theories that originated from fringe corners of the Internet that he hoped would validate his baseless claims of widespread voter fraud. The only fraud was Dumpf himself through all of this!

One of the more ridiculous theories that the witnesses described involved Italian satellites changing votes from Dumpf to Biden that was pushed by White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows as he applied pressure to top national security officials to investigate, which was accurately characterized by former Justice Department official Richard Donoghue as “pure insanity.” He was one of those figures who was asked to look into the false claim.

“The former Justice Department officials also detailed how Trump himself had urged them and senior officials at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to seize voting machines from voting machines from state governments in pursuit of the same – all without cause for taking such an unprecedented step.”

This proceeding has been described as less emotional from Tuesday’s hearing and previous ones, but it was nonetheless essential to understanding the breadth of Dumpf’s efforts to subvert the 2020 election. The men who testified today described very accurately what they saw and heard as Dumpf tried to enlist them to help him stay in power – and how he tried to oust them when they refused to do his bidding.

What gave the hearing today more gravitas was the raid by federal investigators of Jeffrey Clark’s northern Virginia home right before the start of the session at 3, not 1, as I originally believed, so both lawmakers and I were caught off guard, since they didn’t anticipate the search, but it seemed that law enforcement investigators may have been heeding their public calls to finally take some action. It’s about time, I would say, as well as many other exasperated Americans who want some accountability for those engaged in such a flagrantly illegal plot to subvert our democracy.

A very damning quote from the former mobster president revealed today during the hearing is the notes Richard Donoghue took of a call from the former conspiracy nut of a president in which Dumpf implored both Rosen and Donoghue to “just say that the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressmen.” Donoghue testified that this is exactly what Dumpf said on the call. What a brazen nod to mendacity is made here by the pathological liar known as Dumpf. Here he is asking the two highest-ranking officials of the Justice Department at the time to just say there was fraud – when they both claimed there wasn’t any at all – and be done with it. This quote also reveals Dumpf’s utter misunderstanding (and contempt) for his own Department of Justice. It underscores his utter ignorance of how the department works and how he expected it to do his bidding only. This again was a president who knew nothing about the Constitution and the levers of government when he became the highest official in the land. What a horror! And this twerp talks about running again in 2024. This is just a delusional fantasy of his when now he could be prosecuted for crimes committed against the Republic as the evidence just pours out from the January 6 select committee.

Those watching these hearings with an open mind must be convinced by now that 45 bears responsibility for not only inciting a riot on the Capitol to halt the peaceful transition of power, he also engaged in a criminal conspiracy with other stooges to subvert our fair and equitable way of conducting elections. This man must be held accountable! There can be no other conclusion.

The Supreme Court revealed its stupidity and right-leaning partiality today when it struck down a New York gun law enacted more than a century ago that places restrictions on carrying a concealed handgun outside the home – which was an opinion marking the widest expansion of gun rights in a decade. This is just deplorable in my mind. The husband of that far-right extremist who gleefully wrote to Mark Meadows, Dumpf’s former chief of staff, about subverting the 2020 election, was the idiot who wrote the court’s ruling, making it a 6-3 majority opinion.

Critics of this decision say the ruling will impair sensible solutions they think can curb gun violence. To me, as with President Joe Biden, who weighed in on the decision, the ruling “contradicts both common sense and the Constitution, and should deeply trouble us all,” as Biden stated in a statement after the ruling was made public. He also said he is “deeply disappointed” with the decision.

Those saner justices who dissented like liberal Justice Stephen Breyer noted the recent spate of gun violence as in Uvalde, Texas, and Buffalo, New York, and said today’s ruling “severely burdens States’ efforts” to curb gun violence.

Already, New York lawmakers like Governor Kathy Hochul called the court’s decision “shocking” and “frightful in its scope of how they are setting back this nation and our ability to protect our citizens.” She unleashed her anger thusly: “Today the Supreme Court is sending us backwards in our efforts to protect families and prevent gun violence. And it’s particularly painful that this came down at this moment, when we’re still dealing with families in pain from mass shootings that have occurred – the loss of life, their beloved children and grandchildren.” Hochul is justifiably outraged by this deranged decision by an out-of-touch Supreme Court.

New York Mayor Eric Adams said the decision will put New Yorkers “at further risk of gun violence” in a statement in which he vowed specific action to mitigate the risks he says the ruling will create.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said the ruling “severely undermines public safety not just in New York City, but around the country.”

I won’t say what the National Rifle Association is calling this ruling. They’re gloating in their shotgun sights. Terrible- every New Yorker should be angry over this disgusting decision by the Supreme Court.

The six justices who handed down this opinion should all be ashamed of themselves. What is with this unholy Second Amendment that makes Americans just insane? No other country comes close to the rate of gun violence that is experienced in our nation. None!

Let’s hope that New York doesn’t turn into the Wild, Wild West as a result of this poor decision.