Tick tock, Donald Trump!
As we’ve recently seen with the likes of Jeffrey Clark, the January 6th Committee witness calendar can change behind-the-scenes, for reasons that don’t immediately become clear to the public. But the way the latest publicly available version of the calendar currently reads, we’re coming up on a huge week.
The calendar has Michael Flynn scheduled to testify to the committee tomorrow, December 6th. Keep in mind that the committee places subpoenaed witnesses on the calendar whether they’ve agreed to show up or not, so it can refer them for contempt if they fail to show.
We’re not sure what Flynn will do tomorrow. But absent some kind of change to the calendar, only one of a few things can happen. If Flynn doesn’t show, the committee will refer him for contempt, and there’s every reason to expect that the DOJ will indict him and arrest him, just like it did with Bannon. Flynn can show up and give cooperative testimony in order to save himself, which would be bad for a whole lot of Trump people. Flynn can show up and plead the fifth, which would look bad for him and Trump world. Or Flynn can show up and give hostile, dishonest, or incoherent testimony, and get himself referred for contempt.
And that’s just the start. The calendar also says that Roger Stone and Alex Jones only have until tomorrow to turn over subpoenaed documents. They then have a testimony deadline shortly thereafter. Jones has publicly said he’ll plead the fifth, though it’s not clear if he’ll show up and surgically plead the fifth to specific questions (which is allowable but often instructive), or if he’ll attempt to plead the fifth with regard to his entire testimony, which would get him indicted for contempt. Stone loves to stir up controversy, but has repeatedly shown himself to be desperately afraid of spending even a short time in prison.
The calendar has Trump lawyer John Eastman scheduled to testify this Wednesday, but he’s already told the committee he intends to plead the fifth across the board. So once Wednesday comes and goes, he’ll get rung up for contempt. The calendar also has Jason Miller, who served as Trump’s spokesperson for much of 2021, scheduled to testify this Friday. Will Miller sell out Trump and others in order to avoid getting indicted for contempt?
The point is that none of these people have a magic wand up their sleeve for getting the January 6th Committee to just leave them alone. Every one of them is either going to end up selling out the rest of Trump world to save themselves, or going to end up indicted for contempt, or going to end up painting the DOJ a roadmap for investigating them by pleading the fifth to specific questions. And this is just the list of witnesses coming up in the short term.
Soon enough we’ll surely see the January 6th Committee subpoenaing Donald Trump himself, and he’ll have to decide whether to show up and plead the fifth, or stay home and get himself rung up for criminal contempt. This has all been building to this kind of culmination all along. This busy upcoming week for the committee is just a reminder of how close we’re getting to the dead center of this criminal plot, and who’s at the center of it.
