() THREAD: In the wake of the first primetime hearing of the House January 6 Committee, America needs an “after-action report” of sorts detailing the most startling revelations from Thursday night as well as what we’ve yet to hear. This thread aims to offer that—hope you’ll RT.

1/ As someone who has now published hundreds and hundreds of pages of exclusive January 6 reports at PROOF, my focus here is on what we heard that was new—as in *actually new*, not just new to some—and what we heard that was *incomplete* in important ways. http://sethabramson.substack.com 

2/ Mike Pence was Acting President of the United States on January 6, 2021—and was treated as such by the leader of the United States Armed Forces explicitly because the President of the United States was AWOL and presumed to be an enemy of the Constitution. That’s Revelation #1.

3/ I can think of no revelation more startling from last night than that one, as I cannot imagine any more startling revelation *ever*. Any partisans who are sad that the hearings seemed to honor Mike Pence are really missing the point here: Mike Pence was our president that day.

4/ Prior to last night we thought Pence was “merely” standing in the breach in Congress—fighting to stay 100 feet (literally) ahead of the mob, refusing efforts to evacuate to Maryland, and forestalling an insurrectionist like Chuck Grassley becoming Senate president pro tempore.

5/ Now we know the truth: Pence was president on January 6, full stop. He called DHS, DOJ, and DOD when Trump wouldn’t; he issued orders to the military when Trump wouldn’t, *and those orders were followed as though they came with presidential authority*. Trump was incapacitated.

6/ Needless to say it requires an invocation—with proper process—of the 25th Amendment to *formally* replace a POTUS with a VPOTUS for any period of time; but we now know what happens if there’s an *active coup attempt* and the president absents himself from the chain of command.

7/ American attorneys are going to have to think long and hard about this and some day SCOTUS will need to speak to it: what happens if—in the view of the US Armed Forces CJCS—the President of the United States is *leading a coup* and there’s no time to invoke the 25th Amendment?

8/ That was the situation on January 6. We now know there were serious conversations amongst Trump’s cabinet to remove him via the 25th Amendment—but that is a slow, political process. On January 6, Trump was AWOL, presumed a traitor, and orders were needed STAT. Pence gave them.

9/ Again, there can be no bigger revelation. So the focus on Pence is to (a) contrast his actions as a constitutional officer to Trump, (b) establish that *in the moment* Trump’s treachery was deemed so absolute by the armed forces that Pence was treated as commander-in-chief...

10/ ...and (c) frame Trump’s efforts to bring Pence into his conspiracy and then—in a revelation that didn’t come last night, but a few days before—actively advocate for Pence’s murder when he would not agree to be complicit in a violent coup of the incoming Biden administration.

11/ But this brings us directly to something that was *incomplete* last night.

In late January 2021 PROOF curated at least *5* major-media reports establishing—from *eyewitnesses*—that Trump was happy, gleeful, even *elated* as he watched his irregulars attack the Capitol on TV.

12/ Last night, the January 6 Committee gave us the “second shoe” of Trump’s January 6 response but not the first one: it established Trump was “angry” to be asked to denounce the attack but did not underscore that that anger was preceded by demonstrative elation. And it matters.

13/ To see why it matters, let’s go back to CJCS Mark Milley for a moment—the man who effectively decided to treat Pence as commander-in-chief on January 6. If the only evidence we had was that Trump was *indecisive* about what if anything to do on January 6, that’d be one thing.

14/ But it *wasn’t*, we now know, that Trump was acting as a POTUS—just a crappy one—on January 6, taking in advice about how to respond to the coup attempt and angrily rejecting it. It’s that the evidence shows Trump *openly supported the coup attempt*.

That changes everything.

15/ Whether CJCS Milley had eyewitness evidence of Trump openly supporting the January 6 coup or not, history will adjudge his replacement of Trump with Pence as reasonable if the HJ6C establishes Trump clearly communicated to everyone around him that he was happy about the coup.

16/ Just so, from the standpoint of a future federal prosecution nearly every conceivable Trump defense—e.g., he simply didn’t understand the gravity of what was happening, and was *incompetent* rather than seditious—is obliterated if he watched everything on TV and was thrilled.

17/ This brings us to another key point: Americans *mustn’t* take the hearings to be indicating Trump was a mere spectator. A viewer of the hearing last night could be forgiven for thinking Trump did little else *as to the mob* besides send an inciting tweet on December 19, 2020.

18/ While the Committee did a good job focusing on how Trump pressured GOP legislators, state executive-branch officials and federal executive-branch officials at DOJ—all non-spectator *actions* suggesting active participation in an *administrative* coup—he actually did far more.

19/ While of course no one will forgive Trump if—and he could certainly be prosecuted if—“all” he did was push fraudulent legal actions he knew were groundless and tried to get DOJ and state executives to push these too, or if “all” he did was orchestrate a “fake elector” plot...

20/ ...but Americans must *not* be accidentally lulled by the Committee into thinking that, *as to the violent coup* (rather than the administrative one), Trump was a spectator or at worst one inciting factor among many. That would be inaccurate and would hurt the HJ6C’s efforts.

21/ To understand my concerns as an attorney, journalist, and Trump historian, we have to go back to Trump’s *first* impeachment trial—the Trump-Ukraine scandal. In that trial, the House managers *dumped* about 85% of their case from the trial because it was deemed too confusing.

22/ The view of members of Congress—and I get why they feel this way—is that Americans have a limited attention span and don’t handle complexity well. So in telling a story members of Congress try to ensure a) as few characters as possible and b) as few subnarratives as possible.

23/ In the first impeachment trial, that meant focusing on a single Trump-Zelensky phone call that was actually only ~5% of the Trump-Ukraine scandal.

In these January 6 hearings, it *could* mean writing most of the major players in the violent coup out of the story altogether.

24/ So last night we heard a lot about the Proud Boys and a bit about the Oath Keepers. But the mechanism Trump used to transport his armed mob from his speech to the Capitol—Stop the Steal, led by Ali Alexander, Alex Jones and Roger Stone? Of them we heard almost nothing at all.

25/ In fact, Trump coordinated with Stop the Steal to ensure they’d transport his mob to where he needed them to be. Consider: the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers *didn’t have enough bodies on January 6* (about 300 in total) to storm the Capitol. Trump needed *way* more human flesh.

26/ Trump’s coordination with Alexander, Jones, and Stone—which was often face-to-face, sometimes by conference call—acted as *the* critical liaison between the White House, the Proud Boys, and the Oath Keepers.

But you wouldn’t really know that from the HJ6C hearing last night.

27/ So why erase this part of the story of January 6? Because the HJ6C appears to believe it involves too many characters, too many pre-insurrection “war rooms” (at least 5), and subplots so stunning Americans may find them harder to believe—though they’re all true—than others.

28/ Plus, the Committee feels it has Trump dead to rights on his administrative maneuvers.

The problem, of course, is that when the fact-pattern of a crime is effectively presented, all parts of it speak to one another. You can’t just excise entire chunks in the way the HJ6C is.

29/ If, as to the most serious January 6 charge—Trump aided and abetted violence—we’re left with only a December 19 (2020) tweet, Trump’s Ellipse speech, a single comment about Pence being hanged and Trump being angry about being asked to denounce the violence, that’s thin gruel.

30/ And if America thinks Trump’s active support for violence is only by implication—e.g., in how his voters and paramilitary radicals “took” his public statements—they are *more* likely to wave away his backroom administrative maneuvers as “just” those of a desperate politician.

31/ Which brings us back to Milley. He made maybe the most consequential decision ever made by a CJCS outside a declared war because he understood Trump to be in favor of a violent coup or ambivalent to it, not because he cared about Trump’s post-election lies or shady wrangling.

32/ So in supposedly catering to what America wants—simplicity, few characters, few plotlines—I worry the HJ6C may *actually* be catering to what *it* (as a body made up of politicians) most understands: lawyers, lobbying, backroom antics. But that’s not what America responds to.

33/ America is a country that helped popularize the daytime soap opera, televised professional wrestling and mystery novels. America *loves* stories with lots of characters and plotlines. What they *don’t* love is stories about political and legal process—it’s politicians who do.

34/ The story of how Trump and his agents worked with fringe-right Christofascist agitators and their paramilitary-radical adjuncts is one of the most thrilling political tales ever told—and more importantly it provides a *full frame* for Trump being OK with Pence getting hanged.

35/ Take away the story of Ali Alexander, Alex Jones, and Roger Stone—or relegate Michael Lindell, Patrick Byrne and even Michael Flynn to one-off mentions—and Americans may easily conclude Trump’s comment about Pence was a one-off joke, and his December 2020 tweet misunderstood.

36/ In fact, as Chris Hayes said on MSNBC last night, the Capitol violence *was* the plan—i.e., *Trump’s* plan. A plan for enough chaos at the Capitol that it’d delay the joint session long enough for his *other* maneuvers to work. See what I mean about subplots working together?

37/ So while I think last night’s hearing was excellent, as a former criminal defense attorney and federal investigator I’m seeing cracks in the HJ6C strategy that I have to be honest about, and that I hope will be remedied. We must remember that the first impeachment was *lost*.

38/ One of the core premises—quite consciously—behind this Twitter feed and PROOF has been that America is *more* willing to read complex, highly detailed, character-heavy narratives than most politicians, lawyers, marketers, or academics realize. We’ve a deep thirst for *depth*.

39/ If the J6 Committee were only doing one primetime hearing and only lasted a day, OK, I’d see a purpose in excising narratives and characters en masse. But this is a year-long committee that in June is putting *two-thirds* of its hearings *weekdays at 10AM*. Maybe depth is OK?

40/ What the HJ6C should do is not just have more faith in Americans but—I hesitate to say it—in corporate media and independent journalists, who do much wrong but are *very* good at distilling/synthesizing large amounts of information.

The HJ6C has help ready; it should use it.

PS/ You can read my live thread from last night’s hearing at the link below. /end https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1535019161558126592