The seventh of the series of televised meetings of the House Committee investigating the January 6th insurrection took place tonight. The first half, or perhaps a bit less, wasn’t quite as interesting as prior hearings, but then two witnesses were brought forth, one a former member of the Oath Keepers, one of the two primary militia groups associated with the insurrection, the other an “everyday” man who showed up at the speech at the Ellipse from his home in Ohio and made the mistake of joining the march
The first guy, Jason Van Tatenhove, was quite interesting. Calling himself an independent journalist and graphics artist, he testified he was hired into the Oath Keepers to work on their web page and do other graphics work. He gives us an insight into Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes, a man who, if I’m to believe Tatenhove, has, as his primary goal, power. He sounds, unsurprisingly, like former President Trump, obsessed and unrestrained by standard codes of honor and behavior, willing to lie and even kill to get what he wants.
The other man, Ayers as I recall, functions as the victim, albeit fairly willing, in this little ad hoc vignette. A family man with a job as a supervisor at a local working shop in Ohio, he was, by his own admission, fascinated by politics, but fed off bad news sources. Now deeply regretful, as it’s cost him his job and perhaps his own self-respect for permitting himself to be taken in by the former President and his allies, Ayers was fairly incoherent, but managed to convey to his former fellow victims that “taking the blinders off” when it comes to the news was the most important thing he did after the insurrection. He is no longer a support of the former President.
There were other points made, such as the vague but unsettling speeches of Alex Jones, Roger Stone, and other Trump allies, who worked on pumping up the crowd on January 5th, with precious little but empty rhetoric. The entry of recent witness Pat Cipollone, White House counsel for the Presidency during the Trump Administration, which does not make him Trump’s counsel, via videotape made for some very interesting moments. While capable of lawyer talk, as he demonstrated once or twice, he mostly stuck with simple, easy to understand answers that, once again, cast the former President in the worst possible light.
In the end, the closing statements of Representatives Murphy, Raskin, Cheney, and Thompson were more important than usual, as they defined and asserted the role that officials, appointed and elected, must fulfill in order to safeguard the Republic and the Constitution. As one of them, I forget who, noted that Pence had made all the appropriate phone calls on January 6th, trying to arrange protection for Congress, while Trump did nothing but sit back and enjoy his debacle, all I could think was this:
DERELICTION OF DUTY.
