Breaking from the Washington Post’s Rosalind Helderman (and highlighted in Brandi Buchman’s LiveBlog and summary of Thursday's Jan. 6 hearings), a trenchant commentary about the craven state of the Republican Party’s representatives in the United States Congress:
Multiple Republican members of Congress asked White House officials if President Donald Trump would preemptively pardon them for their activities in the lead-up to Jan. 6 before he left office, testimony provided by Trump White House aides to the Jan. 6 committee shows.
The members included Reps. Matt Gaetz (Fla.), Mo Brooks (Ala.), Andy Biggs (Ariz.), Louie Gohmert (Tex.) and Scott Perry (Pa.), the testimony showed.
As Helderman reports, the testimony regarding these wannabe seditionists’ efforts to inoculate themselves against the consequences for what they clearly understood were potentially criminal acts came from Cassidy Hutchinson, an aide to Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows, and Trump aide John McEntee.
According to the article, Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene reportedly asked for a pardon as well, but Hutchinson could not verify that as she hadn’t taken the call. Perry has denied ever requesting a pardon, so he’s either lying or Hutchinson is. Of course, Hutchinson has no discernable reason to lie about such a thing, whereas Perry has every reason in the world.
We’ve heard before about this infamous "pardon list” from John Eastman, one of the prime architects of the seditious scheme to overturn the 2020 election results, who asked to be included on it, but no one seems to have actually produced a copy of what must certainly be a fascinating document. As the Post’s Aaron Blake explains:
That suggests that the plotters weighed the possible need for pardons in some considerable measure — that those who led the effort to overturn the election believed they might have enough legal liability that they floated the extraordinary step of obtaining rare, preemptive presidential pardons.
It appears to be the first time we’ve seen firm evidence of such a request. And while by itself it doesn’t constitute an admission of guilt, it fills out a fast-crystallizing picture that those involved in the plot knew that what they were doing was, at the very least, potentially illegal. [...]
We still don’t know how extensive the pardon deliberations were. But what we do know — based on early reporting and on the evidence Thursday — is that people were pretty scared that what they had done could come back to bite them.
Or, as Republican Adam Kinzinger laconically explained:
“The only reason I know to ask for a pardon because you think you’ve committed a crime,” Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) said.
The sheer sordid criminality of this brazen venture to illegally disenfranchise over half of the American electorate is nothing short of mind-boggling. Equally mind-boggling is the fact that they're still in Congress. None of these people belong in government. Many clearly don’t belong on our streets, either.