More January 6th organizers cave and begin cooperating with the committee

| 10:30 am EST December 15, 2021
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For awhile now it’s been clear that the January 6th Committee decided to start things off by subpoenaing Steve Bannon because it knew he wouldn’t cooperate due to his ongoing legal troubles, and it could thus make an example out of him by getting him indicted for contempt. Sure enough, this tactic has scared other, more skittish witnesses into cooperating. It’s not just that Mark Meadows turned over a treasure trove of evidence before clamming up. It’s that lower level witnesses are now cooperating in full, and turning over evidence against bigger fish.

For instance, the committee recently subpoenaed January 6th organizers Dustin Stockton and Jennifer Lynn Lawrence, and sure enough, Rolling Stone says they’ve decided to fully cooperate. More to the point, they’ve turned over direct messages that they exchanged with Congressman Madison Cawthorn.

The January 6th Committee clearly thought these two witnesses had valuable enough information that it was worth subpoenaing them over it, and sure enough, they’ve turned over that evidence. Now the committee can use this evidence as a basis for subpoenaing Cawthorn, or whatever the next logical step is.

Getting Steve Bannon arrested for non-cooperation, and soon getting Mark Meadows arrested for incomplete cooperation, is sending a clear message to all the other witnesses out there: cooperate or prepare to stand trial for criminal contempt and risk prison time. We’ll see more witnesses cooperate going forward.

Also, keep in mind that news of this or that witness cooperating often doesn’t come out until that cooperation is complete. For instance, by the time the media learned that Mike Pence’s Chief of Staff Marc Short was cooperating with the committee, he’d already been cooperating for several weeks. Going forward, keep an eye on which witnesses get subpoenaed and then don’t get in any trouble once their subpoena deadlines come and go. That’s a potential sign that they haven’t gotten busted because they’re cooperating with the committee.