The Mark Meadows January 6th hokey pokey
Well, it’s one foot in and it’s one foot out for former Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. As a consequence of Meadows’ hokey pokey song and dance, the January 6 Committee has delayed its plans to hold open hearings. “Well, you know, I’d hoped it would happen in March,” Committee member Jamie Raskin said, adding that he hopes now the hearings will be held “later in the spring, April or May more likely.”
Raskin said “the obstruction and roadblocks thrown up by the entourage right around Donald Trump — Mark Meadows, who’s kind of doing the hokey pokey, one foot in, one foot out — Steve Bannon, Roger Stone.”
“It’s only when you get right to that kind of bullseye core right around Donald Trump and his innermost confidants that people think they’re somehow above the law and can just give the finger to the U.S. Congress.”
Meadows started out cooperating, by first turning over thousands of documents before doing a sudden volte-face and stonewalling the Committee by refusing to testify or cooperate further. The indication is that pressure was applied on Meadows, who may have subsequently engaged with a conspiracy to obstruct Congress, a federal crime.
But justice delayed is not always justice denied, and Meadows and those other members of the Trump inner circle — specifically Steve Bannon and Roger Stone as mentioned — may be in for a rude awakening. Their enjoyment of maverick hero status in MAGAland could turn out to be short lived, with a turn in prison looming in their immediate futures.
Meanwhile the Committee is forced to take the long way home, thus delaying the coming spectacle of public testimony. Unfortunately this move is making a lot of Democrats nervous. They fear that if the Committee takes too long it risks being disbanded should Republicans retake the House in November.
But it’s important to remember two things, first, that should Republicans reclaim a majority in the midterms, Democrats still have an additional two months as the majority before the new members are sworn in on January 3rd. Second, the members of the Committee are not stupid. They are just as aware of the timeline as everyone else.
In fact, a delay in the public hearings might actually turn out to be a good thing. It could mean that the most dramatic parts of the testimony could take place right in the middle of midterm voting. Republicans will not come out of the hearings looking better. Unlike Hillary Clinton, who burnished her image during the farcical Republican Benghazi hearings, the Republicans are clearly guilty. After all, were it otherwise they would be clamoring to testify.
Raskin believes that, “these could be the most important hearings in American history. I mean, certainly up there with the Watergate hearings,” he said. I think Mr. Raskin is being too modest. Watergate was a secret and cheap duct tape and glue burglary intended to find dirt on Democrats in order to give Nixon an unfair advantage in an election he already had in the bag. The January 6th insurrection was an attempt to overthrow by violence a near landslide election by domestic terrorists, a whole order of magnitude more serious and potentially devastating to the continued existence of the American Relublic. As such I think this hearing is of far greater historical significance than the Watergate hearings. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.