[Republic Brief] From the very beginning it’s been clear to us that the January 6th Committee started off by subpoenaing Steve Bannon, knowing he wouldn’t cooperate because he has too many other legal problems going on, so it could make an example out of him by having him indicted and arrested for contempt. The point was to scare other, more skittish witnesses into cooperating, for fear of also ending up indicted.We’re not surprised that Mark Meadows has been flip flopping back and forth between cooperating and not cooperating, both because he’s a Trump loyalist and because he’s under criminal investigation for election tampering in Georgia. But what about key witnesses who have no such loyalty to Trump, and who have no existing criminal liability? We predicted from the start that it would be these types who would end up cooperating with the committee.
Sure enough, CNN is now reporting that Mike Pence’s former Chief of Staff Marc Short has been secretly cooperating with the January 6th Committee for a few weeks. It’s the length of time that matters here, because if Short’s cooperation were insufficient or incomplete, the committee would have begun contempt proceedings against him by now. The fact that Short’s cooperation has lasted for weeks means that it must be the real deal. Moreover,
The secrecy is also notable. If Marc Short has been secretly cooperating all this time, which other key witnesses have also been secretly cooperating? Witnesses who have no underlying criminal liability, and can walk away scot-free just by fully cooperating with the committee, are going to be inclined to do so. Short’s cooperation is proof of this. There will be more such cooperating witnesses.
The timing of this reveal is also notable. Presumably, only the 1/6 Committee members themselves knew that Short was cooperating with them. This means the committee itself was most likely the source of today’s leak. This in turn means that the committee has now decided that it wants other witnesses to know that Short has been in there giving up the goods against them, thus leaving them with little option but to also cooperate. This is all escalating quickly now — and it’s becoming clear that the committee has been a few steps ahead of the public all along.
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