Seth Abramson

Seth Abramson @SethAbramson

49/ Apparently Cheney will ask questions also. She is now questioning Judge Luttig. — PolitiTweet.org

Seth Abramson @SethAbramson

48/ Jacob says Pence realized from the jump—in early December of 2020—that there was no way whatsoever the Constitution authorized him to pick the next U.S. president (his own obvious conflict of interest being one of many reasons for this). This was *5 weeks* before January 6. — PolitiTweet.org

Seth Abramson @SethAbramson

47/ Greg Jacob is giving a timeline of his legal advice to Pence. He says Pence first knew his supposed role in the joint session of Congress on January 6 could become an issue (a political and/or legal issue) in early December 2020. — PolitiTweet.org

Seth Abramson @SethAbramson

46/ Correcting a prior tweet, it now appears Rep. Thompson may ask a *few* of today’s questions himself. He has recognized himself for questions, and is giving a brief pre-testimony statement again summarizing what Trump did to try to pressure DOJ and the Vice President’s Office. — PolitiTweet.org

Seth Abramson @SethAbramson

45/ It appears—as Thompson introduces today’s witnesses—that the Committee is again going to try to focus as much as possible on *Trump* even as this hearing talks a lot of Pence: specifically, that Trump knowingly put Pence in grave danger by spreading lies Trump knew were lies. — PolitiTweet.org

Seth Abramson @SethAbramson

44/ Aguilar plays a short video of the violent January 6 mob establishing that Trump’s lies on January 6 about Pence’s powers—and his false claim that what Pence would do on January 6 was still an open question on January 6—created real dangers for Pence at the Capitol that day. — PolitiTweet.org

Seth Abramson @SethAbramson

43/ Rep. Pete Aguilar (D) is going to do the questioning today, and he is now giving his opening statement. — PolitiTweet.org

Seth Abramson @SethAbramson

42/ Greg Jacob (Mike Pence’s former legal counsel) says that on January 4, 2021 John Eastman *told* Donald Trump that the plan they were pushing was illegal—as it would violate the Electoral Count Act of 1887. — PolitiTweet.org

Seth Abramson @SethAbramson

41/ Per Short, Pence told Trump he couldn’t/wouldn’t do as asked *many* times. Cheney quotes a federal judge saying Trump and Eastman likely violated criminal laws in their pressure campaign on Pence/others. Cheney shows a Jacob depo saying Trump knew Eastman’s plan was illegal. — PolitiTweet.org

Seth Abramson @SethAbramson

40/ First clip of Pence speaking—probably first of many today—underscoring that he knew, and has since said he knew, that he could not do as Trump asked because it was illegal. The next clip is of Pence chief of staff Marc Short saying Pence *told* Trump he could not do as asked. — PolitiTweet.org

Seth Abramson @SethAbramson

39/ Now Vice Chair Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) is recapping how this fits into prior hearings. She notes that Trump had been repeatedly told his supposed legal theories were absolute nonsense, as were his claims of fraud. She is noting that Trump pressured Pence on all of this anyway. — PolitiTweet.org

Seth Abramson @SethAbramson

38/ Thompson is noting the danger Pence was in and lauding Pence’s actions. All expected starting material. — PolitiTweet.org

Seth Abramson @SethAbramson

37/ Thompson is reviewing the basic facts: what Trump wanted Pence to do on January 6; what Pence’s actual role was; and how Pence resisted Trump’s (truly deranged) pressure to do something Pence could not do and knew he could not do and no VP of the United States has ever done. — PolitiTweet.org

Seth Abramson @SethAbramson

36/ Okay, the hearing has just been gavelled in by Chair Bennie Thompson. — PolitiTweet.org

Seth Abramson @SethAbramson

RT @SethAbramson: 2/ This live thread is of course free. If, as you follow along between now and 3:30PM today, you feel moved to use the ti… — PolitiTweet.org

Seth Abramson @SethAbramson

RT @SethAbramson: 1/ At times I may make reference in this thread to evidence previously published in the nearly 200 reports on January 6 t… — PolitiTweet.org

Seth Abramson @SethAbramson

RT @SethAbramson: (🧵) LIVE THREAD: I’m live-tweeting today’s (Thursday’s) 1PM ET House January 6 Committee hearing. I’m a lawyer, journalis… — PolitiTweet.org

Seth Abramson @SethAbramson

35/ Because the topics adjacent to Pence—see above—are historically grave but also historically *complex*, the Committee, which is loathe to touch on topics it deems too confusing for Americans, is likely temperamentally inclined to *avoid* some of the really critical stuff here. — PolitiTweet.org

Seth Abramson @SethAbramson

34/ This is the danger Trump *always* poses and *will* pose to historians: Trump digs countless meaningless rabbit-holes that usually *obscure* what really matters in any fact-pattern he is involved with. So there are pitfalls here that the House January 6 Committee *must* avoid. — PolitiTweet.org

Seth Abramson @SethAbramson

33/ While Trump’s lies about Pence on January 6 help reveal (a) his actual foreknowledge—from a Secret Service report given to him days earlier—that there would be violence on January 6 and (b) the national security situation he’d created, the *lies themselves* aren’t the focus. — PolitiTweet.org

Seth Abramson @SethAbramson

32/ By the same token, PROOF and other reporting on how pro-Trump elements in the Secret Service helped create a national security emergency on January 6—and may have discoursed with far-right paramilitaries—is far *more* important than Trump’s lies about Mike Pence on January 6. — PolitiTweet.org

Seth Abramson @SethAbramson

31/ Consider for instance the news about John Eastman having privileged access—apparently—to internal SCOTUS data via (it certainly appears) Ginni Thomas. It’s an example of Pence-adjacent Eastman drama being *more* important than Eastman’s lame and doomed attempts to sway Pence. — PolitiTweet.org

Seth Abramson @SethAbramson

30/ So I am worried. Watching CNN now and hearing the focus on Judge Luttig we are about to see, I worry the focus of this hearing will be Trump’s ludicrous legal theories *in and of themselves* rather than what Trump and his agents’ actions *meant* as a national security matter. — PolitiTweet.org

Seth Abramson @SethAbramson

29/ In other words, to anyone who’s been researching January 6 for the last 18 months, Pence is a *jumping-off point* rather than an endpoint in himself. He *enables* some critical January 6 conversations despite his camp’s internal legal debate not being very interesting at all. — PolitiTweet.org

Seth Abramson @SethAbramson

28/ My answer is simple: we can spin our wheels discussing Pence’s heroism and the advice given to him *only* up until the moment—and it comes *pretty quick*—that it starts to obscure the many, many, *many* fascinating and deeply fraught narratives that are *adjacent* to Pence’s. — PolitiTweet.org

Seth Abramson @SethAbramson

27/ Trump—and Trump alone, if at times aided by his legal agents (at Trump’s demand)—created the farcical notion that Pence had a special role on January 6. To be clear, he didn’t and never did and no one serious ever told him he did. So how much do we indulge that Trump fantasy? — PolitiTweet.org

Seth Abramson @SethAbramson

26/ In writing and publishing on Trump, as I’ve now done for seven years and across the equivalent of *seven* 500-page nonfiction works (three in print, and four at PROOF), I have learned that the key is not to go *too far* down a delusional rabbit-hole dug by Trump’s sociopathy. — PolitiTweet.org

Seth Abramson @SethAbramson

25/ Why? Because Pence’s heroism—and the advice of the lawyers near Pence—was just the workaday function of public officials and lawyers that *in any other era but the Trump era* wouldn’t even have to be remarked upon. The “story”—that is—is wholly created by Trump’s criminality. — PolitiTweet.org

Seth Abramson @SethAbramson

24/ All of which leaves us a clear way to evaluate the success of today’s hearing: if the takeaway is something banal (if true) such as that Pence acted semi-heroically on January 6, or got good advice from honorable lawyers, the hearing will be boring, pointless, and a failure. — PolitiTweet.org

Seth Abramson @SethAbramson

23/ Just so, one of the biggest pieces of breaking news on the *eve* of the House January 6 Committee hearings was that Marc Short had expressed concern to the US Secret Service on the eve of January 6 that Pence was in danger from—in ways Short somehow still left hazy—*inside*. — PolitiTweet.org