Jan 6th Hearings

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^it seems both of you are vibing in some
sort of fantasy echo chamber instead of just watching the hearings and learning what everyone else has learned about trump and his loyalists crimes.

Why are you both so afraid of watching the hearings & learning about what trump and co did?

You've asked that same question several times now, even though it's already been answered. I have watched recaps, which is how I know they're getting nowhere as usual. And I really couldn't care less what happens to an ex-president. Especially when I know nothing is going to happen. The only thing I'm "afraid" of is being bored to death.

Where are you watching recaps that say they're getting nowhere? fox news?

The committee itself cannot file criminal charges, though it can refer its findings to the Department of Justice. It’s not news to the D.O.J., of course, that laws were broken. More than eight hundred and fifty people have been charged so far. In late June, the department issued subpoenas in connection with an investigation of the Trump team’s “fake electors” scheme. (A related criminal investigation is under way in Georgia.) And yet there is some discontent among Democrats at the pace of the D.O.J.’s work; Representative Adam Schiff, a committee member, recently depicted the department as being woefully behind. That view is not quite fair. Last week, Attorney General Merrick Garland told reporters that “no person is above the law in this country,” a remark he repeated when asked if it applied to a former President. The real source of anxiety may be not Garland’s tactics but Trump’s. He is not done with the last election and is expected to declare his candidacy in the next one soon; polls indicate that, if the Republican primaries were held now, he would win the nomination.

A criminal conviction in itself, though, would not block Trump from returning to the White House. There are good reasons that this is so: one can only imagine the mischief local prosecutors would get up to otherwise. In 1920, Eugene V. Debs, a Socialist, ran for President from a prison cell in Atlanta, after being convicted of violating the Espionage Act of 1917, for speaking against military recruitment efforts. He got nearly a million votes.

Some Democrats and legal scholars have seized on Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment as a possible route to disqualifying Trump from taking office again. This provision, originally aimed at keeping Confederates who had been public officials before the Civil War from holding certain offices after it, refers rather broadly to engaging in “insurrection or rebellion.” The problems with applying it now are manifold. There are disputes about whether the Presidency counts as one of the offices in question; whether an 1872 amnesty law negates the clause; and how it all might be executed and adjudicated. (Trump’s acquittal in his second impeachment trial, when he was charged with incitement of insurrection, might also be a factor.) The modern limits of the clause have been only partly tested, in lower courts, in suits brought by advocacy groups against Republican candidates who played some role in the events of January 6th. It is hard to imagine that the current Supreme Court would disqualify Trump from running.

What’s more, the only non-Civil War use of Section 3 was entirely disreputable. In 1919, the House of Representatives refused to seat Victor Berger, a Wisconsin Socialist, who, like Debs, had been convicted under the Espionage Act—in Berger’s case, for publishing editorials saying that the First World War benefitted “our plutocracy.” There was a special election to fill the vacant seat—he won again, and the House rejected him again. He finally took his seat after winning yet another election, in 1922, by which point the war fever had cooled and the Supreme Court had overturned his conviction. “From time immemorial, the Bird of Liberty was a jailbird,” Berger told the congressmen considering his case.

Trump, God knows, is no Berger or Debs. A reading of Section 3 capacious enough to disqualify him would nonetheless be highly destructive; it would turn the clause into an anti-democratic instrument that would inevitably be deployed against a broad range of candidates. There are simply no shortcuts here. That reality doesn’t mean that Garland should hesitate to put Trump on trial. Indeed, if Trump is as able as anyone to run for the Presidency from a jail cell, a prosecution should be less vulnerable to the charge that it would deprive people of a chance to vote for (or against) him. And, as the committee has made clear, the evidence is there

I've mostly watched Colbert's recaps, because I know I'll at least get some entertainment value out of those. You're young enough to waste hours watching full length nothing. When you get to be my age, you'll put a higher value on time.

I'll sum up all future episodes for you:

/\
The whole thing is looking more and more like a feelgood handjob put on for the left to make them think something is being done. It's a TV series like any other.
Maybe get a hobby or something.

Colbert is entertaining. I've seen some of his recaps. Surely he's mentioned the crimes that the J6 committee has specifically stated trump has committed.. Not sure how he could recap the hearings without mentioning those.

I don't watch them with undivided attention. I listen to the audio as they play in the background while I do other things. Also, I don't watch tv/netflix etc ever, so listening to some newsclips stream on Facebook watch, like I'm doing right now listening to David Pakman while having my Sunday morning coffee, is all the watching/listening I do. No shows, almost no movies, I never turn any of the tv's on - but these hearings are of particular interest to me after watching the slow moving trainwreck trump & co. have been for the last several years. Why wouldn't I pay attention to the finale & encores now that things are getting exciting at it looks like he and his co-crimers may be held accountable for some of the things they've done?

Yeah, he is a very bad man - criminal in many ways. Tax evasion, seditious conspiracy, possibly a rapist multiple times over etc. And who knows, maybe he goes down for the rape of that woman in a department store and it sewers his political career?

In any event, MY bet is trump gets criminally charged with at least something over J6. Whether he gets convicted and faces consequences or not is hard to say for certain, but I bet he gets criminally charged. Care to make a wager on it? I'm not much of a gambling man, so it's mostly symbolic. I'd been in for $5 or $10 just for the "told ya so," factor if you're up for it. :beer:

There's a reasonable chance they'll come up with some sort of official sounding symbolic wrist slap. More likely they'll just leave whatever hanging in the air.

You're basing this off of what ? Apparently not the hearings you haven't watched.

I'm basing it on six years of Trump investigations and hearings going nowhere. And yes, I'm commenting on something I don't care about. But please enlighten everyone on one thing he will get indicted for. I'll bet you 5 bucks you can't come up with anything based on what's been presented. And really with all the talk of him being put behind bars, anything sort of that isn't going to amount to squat.