Republicans Should Investigate the Jan. 6 Show Trial

CLAY: Are lawyers as blown away by this decision of the January 6th committee to allow her to testify to hearsay as I am, Cassidy Hutchinson? Also, not do the bare minimum of research to provide some element of corroboration. Report from Politico: The Secret Service has not been contacted in the last 10 days. I just want you to think about this. If you knew that someone was going to testify to what Secret Service agents had allegedly said happened inside of a vehicle, wouldn’t the first thing you would do — if you truly cared about the truth at all — be to go to the Secret Service agents and ask them for comment?

Take it outside of a court proceeding ’cause this wouldn’t be allowed in a typical trial ’cause it’s hearsay. If you were just doing due diligence on behalf of your company… I used to do sexual harassment investigations. This would be like me taking one side and not even attempting to contact the other side to get their story. At the most basic level even of journalism — and we know there’s a lot of really rigged journalism that goes on.

Someone tells you a story, the bare minimum you could do is reach out to the person that they told you the story about and say, “Hey, did you say this? Does this comport with your recollections? What did you see as the actual eyewitness?” Instead, this January 6th committee put on somebody testifying to what someone else had said without even asking the people who had actually been there. You can hear it in my voice.

Buck, he was researching this yesterday afternoon, I started tweeting about it some. As I had time — ’cause this was happening while we were on the air, so I didn’t spend much time in real time, we were on the air. I’m legitimately blown away that this testimony occurred. And not to mention that they made it bombshell, that they called a special session to allow this testimony? It’s inexcusable, it’s indefensible, and Republicans I think should almost start their own investigation of the January 6th committee when they win the House.

BUCK: It’s not supposed to be fair, right? It’s supposed to be destructive. The whole point of this isn’t to get to some underlying truth. This is a “Trump is worse than Hitler” infomercial for emotionally unstable libs. That’s what you’re watching with these January 6th hearings day in and day out. There’s nothing new that we’re learning of any consequence, and that’s why — I mean, Clay, you’ve done criminal trials.

If they had a better shot than this, they would have taken it, right? If they actually had something after all of this, after all the investigation… January 6th was 18 months ago, give or take now, right? We’re going way back. They’ve had a lot of time to prepare. It’s not like this was a few weeks ago. But I also think at some level the Democrats, what we’re seeing here, yes, there’s always incompetence and there’s delusion, right? I don’t know if… It’s so hard when you watch someone like Congressman Raskin.

Is he a delusional liar or a liar who has delusions, right? Which is it really? Is it really believe this BS or is it he’s just feeding this to his constituents knowing that it’s all garbage and maybe he believes a little bit of it here and there? They have no counternarrative about the Biden administration. Steve Scalise, for example, I think says it really well when he goes, “People aren’t look at this and saying, ‘Oh, yeah, this is so important.’ They’re saying, ‘I can’t afford gas!’”

BUCK: Yeah, they’re angry about things that actually matter.

CLAY: Yeah, and the reality is the ratings came out yesterday — we were talking about them for cable news in the second quarter, basically, Buck — CNN and MSNBC as well as the New York Times and the Washington Post need Donald Trump more than Fox News and the Wall Street Journal do because their entire worldview is based on Donald Trump being the devil. And as soon as Donald Trump is off the stage, then there’s nothing that unites the Democrat Party.

They have to discuss the border being wide open — they have to discussing murder rate skyrocketing, 8.6% inflation, war in Europe — and so instead they have these fake show trials. And, again, I want to hear from other lawyers out there: Are you as blown away that this could happen as I am? 1-800-282-2882. By the way, Buck, did you see your boy Jake Tapper actually went after Raskin when you were mentioning is he a delusional liar or not?

CNN, to his credit, Jake Tapper said, “Wait a minute. Did you guys have any corroborating evidence at all in order to put this witness, Cassidy Hutchinson, on the stand?” Raskin couldn’t even answer the question. Joe Scarborough — we were talking about him earlier — is a graduate of law school, University of Florida 1990, according to our team. Well, the Gators need to pull that diploma back.

Because if he’s not able to analyze on his show — despite the fact they pay him millions of dollars — this Cassidy Hutchinson being hearsay and being immediately shot out of the air by the actual witnesses in the vehicle, I just… I know that I have a low standard already, Buck, both of us do, for media coverage of events. But this was even below my incredibly low standard of expectation.

BUCK: Let’s just think. We can transition this for just a second from the political realm to a straight-up trial. This is not a trial. It’s Congress.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: It’s a show trial in the old Soviet sense, and this is the third one. They’ve done two.

CLAY: Third impeachment.

BUCK: This is the third. This is what they love to do. They can’t stop with the theatrics. It’s also absurd. If there was a shooting — and Secret Service, remember, are law enforcement — and there were cops on the scene who apparently witnessed the shooting, would you go to a friend of one of the cops who said that they saw something, or would you actually call the cops and say, “Did you see the shooting?” Obviously, they are unserious in this process.

CLAY: It’s almost criminal, in my mind, that you could put this girl, Cassidy Hutchinson, 25-year-old, and have her testify without even attempting to corroborate what she was gonna say. Now, if you wanted to have her testify and say, “Well, the Secret Service agents now are saying something different than what they told her back in January,” that’s an argument you could make.

It wouldn’t be admissible, probably, in a court of law because it’s hearsay. But in this show trial, okay. Maybe you could still allow it. They didn’t even put the Secret Service agents, who reportedly are willing to testify under oath right now in front of the committee, and the committee hasn’t subpoenaed — the committee subpoenaed — every Republican on the planet. They subpoenaed Sean Hannity, I think, for God’s sake!

BUCK: Let’s think about this. You’re a congressional investigator. You hear this story. Do you go to the Secret Service agents right away or not?

CLAY: Yeah! Yeah! It’s the first thing you do!

BUCK: Of course. Of course.

CLAY: If you actually cared about the truth, which is why, Buck, I was using as an example, I’ve done — I used to do — investigations internally for companies into sexual harassment allegations. So I would have to talk to everyone and then write up a report. This was not a criminal or civil investigation. This was internal for the company. But if I didn’t talk to every possible witness, I would be doing a sham investigation, and it’s insulting to me that that could be going on with our tax dollars right now.

BUCK: This is supposed to be a sham investigation, and everyone’s now seeing it. That is the whole point, and it’s laid bare for everyone to view with your own eyes.