It’s Sean Hannity’s time in the barrel
Fox News host Sean Hannity often manages to find himself connected to various Donald Trump scandals, sometimes tangentially, sometimes in the thick of it. But Hannity seems to be just slippery enough to avoid getting dragged down in the process. However, he may have finally bitten off more than he can chew.
Adam Schiff now says that the January 6th Committee has requested Sean Hannity’s cooperation with regard to the text messages he was sending Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows during the January 6th Capitol attack. Talk about a no-win situation for Hannity.
Keep in mind that the committee surely already has some or all of Hannity’s text messages to Meadows, or it wouldn’t be targeting him like this. If Hannity’s texts reveal that he was in on the January 6th plot, then he’s screwed for obvious reasons. And even if Hannity is innocent in all of this and his texts were merely pleading with Meadows to have Trump call off the Capitol attackers, Hannity will lose badly in the eyes of his own audience by testifying to as much.
If you’re wondering which way Hannity is leaning, longtime Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow is representing him in the matter, suggesting Hannity is trying to figure out how not to cooperate.
Hannity is (technically) a member of the press, so the committee has to be careful about the optics of how it handles this. But if Hannity refuses to cooperate, the committee can move on to subpoenaing him. And if he fails to comply, the committee can ask the DOJ to indict and arrest him for contempt. So one way or another, on some level, it’s about to be Sean Hannity’s time in the barrel.
