The January 6th scandal just exploded – and these House Republicans may go down for it
There are always two things to keep in mind about federal criminal investigations into a wide scale criminal conspiracy: 1) the Feds work from the bottom up, busting the low level henchmen and trying to flip them upwards – meaning we never do know for sure whether the higher ups will end up indicted until the probe has advanced quite a ways. 2) the DOJ makes indictment decisions based on whether there’s at least an 85-90% chance of conviction at trial, meaning there has to be substantial evidence against them in order for them to go down.
This brings us to the DOJ criminal probe into the January 6th Capitol attack, which thus far has resulted in hundreds of low level arrests as the probe has attempted to work its way upward. Now we’re getting solid confirmation that this effort is succeeding. Rolling Stone is reporting that multiple leaders of the Capitol attack are cooperating with the DOJ, and ratting out several political higher ups in the process.
According to the leaders who are cooperating, Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows helped coordinate the January 6th protests, and refused to intervene once they turned violent. Worse, House Republican Paul Gosar goaded the Capitol attackers ahead of time by dangling a “blanket pardon” in an “unrelated ongoing investigation” in exchange for carrying out the protests.
Two thoughts immediately come to mind here. First, if this reporting is accurate, then Gosar might as well start getting fitted for a prison jumpsuit. Offering pardons in exchange for, well, anything is a felony – and offering pardons in exchange for leading protests that turned into an insurrection is a whole lot of felonies.
Second, if you’re thinking that Paul Gosar can’t pardon anyone, you’re right. Gosar was clearly offering to have Donald Trump pardon these January 6th ringleaders. It’s not clear if Gosar was merely floating this on his own, or if he discussed it with Trump before making the offer. But if it’s the latter, this might be the smoking gun that finally nails Trump on federal charges for public corruption.
In any case, it’s clear that the lid has now been blown completely off the January 6th criminal conspiracy. Over the weekend the Washington Post exposed the Trump command center at the Willard Hotel during the insurrection. At the time, Palmer Report pointed to this as a sign that the media was finally gearing up to push January 6th front and center in its daily coverage, and to specifically the role that Trump and his people played in helping to plan the attack. Now this Rolling Stone expose further points to this process being underway.
Now that the bright lights are shining on this criminal conspiracy, we’re likely about to see some cockroaches scattering. The Rolling Stone article says that Lauren Boebert, Mo Brooks, Andy Biggs, Louie Gohmert, and Madison Cawthorn all either met with or sent staffers to meet with the insurrectionists to plot the January 6th rally. Given that these staffers are surely going to face criminal scrutiny, we’ll see if any of them abruptly resign, which we could take as a sign that they plan to flip on their bosses.
