[guest post by Dana]
As Patterico posted last week, the day after Cassidy Hutchinson testified before the Jan. 6 Committee last week, we went to see Rep. Liz Cheney speak at the Reagan Library. Toward the end of her talk, Cheney made the following observations:
I will tell you, it is especially the young women, young women who seem instinctively to understand the peril of this moment for our democracy, and young women who know that it will be up to them to save it. And I have been incredibly moved by the young women that I have met and that have come forward to testify in the January 6th Committee. Some of these are young women who worked on the Trump campaign, some worked in the Trump White House, some who worked in offices on Capitol Hill, all who knew immediately that what happened that day must never happen again.
America had the chance to meet one of these young women yesterday, Miss Cassidy Hutchinson. Her superiors, men many years older, a number of them are hiding behind executive privilege, anonymity, and intimidation, but her bravery and her patriotism yesterday were awesome to behold. Little girls all across this great nation are seeing what it really means to love this country and what it really means to be a patriot. And I want to speak to every young girl watching tonight. The power is yours and so is the responsibility. In our great nation, one individual can make all the difference and each individual must try. There are no bystanders in a constitutional republic. And let me also say this to the little girls and to the young women who are watching tonight, these days for the most part, men are running the world and it is really not going that well.
Boy, ain’t that the truth!
With that, it was announced yesterday that yet another young woman and former Trump staffer has agreed to testify before the Jan. 6 Committee:
Sarah Matthews, who served as deputy press secretary in the Trump White House until resigning shortly after the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, has been subpoenaed by the House select committee investigating the insurrection and has agreed to testify at an upcoming hearing, according to two sources with knowledge of the investigation.
Matthews has been subpoenaed to testify at a public hearing as early as next week, sources tell CNN.
Matthews resigned the night of January 6, 2021, saying in a statement that she was honored to serve in then-President Donald Trump’s administration but “was deeply disturbed by what I saw.” She added: “Our nation needs a peaceful transfer of power.”
Matthews took to Twitter after Hutchinson’s testimony, and pointed out the obvious to critics:
Anyway, while there are any number of former Trump staffers whose testimony would be welcomed by the Committee, self-preservation compels them to do otherwise:
Most of those who might conceivably offer such testimony – everyone from Republican congressmen to former generals to Trump’s White House counsel to the spouse of a Supreme Court justice — are fighting subpoenas, taking the Fifth or simply refusing to testify. And if they don’t want to tell their story to the committee, under oath, every reporter and TV outlet in the world would love to give them an opportunity to do so without such an oath. Apparently, they’re afraid that revealing what they did, what they witnessed and what they heard wouldn’t be all that helpful to Trump or to their own situation.
I think they’re probably right.
In fact, the same instincts of self-preservation that drove these people to stay silent or play along while Trump tried to end American democracy are still telling them, even after all this, that cowardice remains the best course. They are victims of their character.
UPDATE: An announcement has just been made that Trump’s White House counsel Pat Cipollone will testify in a closed-door, videotaped interview with the Jan. 6 committee. Why his testimony is so important:
[Cassidy] Hutchinson revealed during the committee’s last hearing that Cipollone repeatedly tried to prevent Trump from encouraging his supporters to march to the Capitol on Jan. 6.
She testified that Cipollone had warned in the days leading up to the attack that the former president and his aides could be charged with “every crime imaginable” if Trump joined protesters at the Capitol.
While the attack was happening, Hutchinson testified that Cipollone demanded to see the president while rioters were chanting for former Vice President Mike Pence to be hanged, but then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows told him Trump “doesn’t want to do anything” and “thinks Mike deserves it.”
–Dana
