Mick Mulvaney.Photo: Samuel Corum/Getty
Mulvaney served as the budget director before becoming Trump’s acting chief of staff and, later, special U.S. envoy to Northern Ireland. Heresignedshortly after the attack on the Capitol.
So far, the U.S. House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection have held six public hearings, which began on June 9 and have allfeatured new revelationsabout the events leading up to the attacks.
The committee has heard testimony fromJustice Department officialswho detailed Trump’s unrelenting pressure to find evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 presidential election,Capitol Police officerswho fought off Trump supporters, andsome former White House staffers, who have detailed the former president’s alleged behavior in the hours leading up to the riots.
The most striking of the hearings so far, Mulvaney writes in his op-ed, came last week, when a former aide to Mark Meadows (another of Trump’s chiefs of staff) testified that Trump was aware his supporters were armed in D.C. on Jan. 6, and thathe lunged at his Secret Service detail in the carin an attempt to reach the Capitol that day.
Video of then-President Trump leaving his Jan. 6, 2021 rally in a Secret Service SUV.Shawn Thew-Pool/Getty
Elsewhere in the hearing, committee members spoke about how at least one witness had testified that allies of Trump had reached out to them, seemingly in an attempt to influence their testimony.
“For the first time, evidence was presented that former President Trump knew some of the protesters were armed before encouraging them to go the Capitol, that right-wing extremist rioters communicated directly with the White House, that key Presidential advisers requested pardons, that the chief White House lawyer was concerned about getting ‘charged with every crime imaginable,’ and that someone within Trump world may be trying to tamper with committee witnesses,” Mulvaney writes.
In day six of its hearings, the committee showed two text messages that they said illustrated a pressure campaign on witnesses deposed for the hearings.
One of the messages, which is partially redacted, reads: “[A person] let me know you have your deposition tomorrow. He wants me to let you know that he’s thinking about you. He knows you’re loyal, and you’re going to do the right thing when you go in for your deposition.”
While Mulvaney calls the allegations “serious stuff,” he notes in his op-ed that “roughly half the country — the Republican half — isn’t watching.”
And while he agrees with some of the criticism in conservative circles — that evidence is edited, or that there’s no cross-examination of witnesses, for instance — Mulvaney says “they still should be paying attention.”
“That is because, despite all of the flaws in the structure of the heavily Democrat committee, almost all of the evidence presented so far is coming from eminently credible sources: Republicans,” he continues.
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“When [Barr] swears, under oath, that he investigated almost every allegation of voter fraud — including those in the2000 Mulesmovie — and found them to be completely worthless, Republicans should pay attention,” Mulvaney writes.
Mulvaney continues: “Yes, it is possible that all of those life-long Republicans succumbed to Trump Derangement Syndrome. It is possible they decided to ignore a life-long political affiliation. It is also possible they chose to perjure themselves about what they saw, heard and know. But if they didn’t, and half of the country isn’t paying attention, then that half of the country is clinging firmly to an opinion of Jan. 6, 2021 that is based on either false or incomplete information.”
source: people.com
