“Will Donald John Trump please take the stand?”
In a vote of nine to zero yesterday, the January 6 Committee voted “Aye” on a resolution proposed by Congresswoman Liz Cheney to subpoena Donald Trump. Should Trump appear, he will be answerable to evidence that the government knew well in advance that there would be violence at the Capitol on January 6th and he took no steps and proposed no measures to stop it. He will be further answerable to demands to know why he not only permitted the violence to happen — he provoked it.
This is an instance of a win-win for us no matter what he does. That Trump will almost certainly defy the subpoena is perfectly fine with me. It will be yet another instance of an indictable offense in a separate courtroom from other indictable offenses committed by Trump.
Recall that Steve Bannon is awaiting sentencing for his contempt of Congress guilty verdict later this month. He will almost certainly draw a custodial sentence. Recall further that former Trump lawyer and “fixer” Michael Cohen pleaded guilty of lying to Congress, which became part of a banquet of guilty pleas that saw him sentenced to more than three years in jail.
So if Trump fails to appear he could quite possibly go to jail for it. Should he appear, on the other hand, he will almost certainly commit perjury, at which point he will open himself up to charges that he lied to Congress, and he could also possibly go to jail for that.
No matter how this subpoena pans out, the results will prove spectacularly bad for Trump and wonderful for us. I, for one, couldn’t be happier. Trump’s chickens are finally coming home to roost, and, after years of abuse from Trump and his MAGA cult, it’s about time we, his victims, had ourselves a little schadenfreude party.
Trump could wind up drawing a bunch of little sentences that, taken together, could prove to be death by a thousand cuts. Let me put it in Trumpian terms: he could get a lot of years. A lot of years. At 76 and spectacular bad health thanks to a perfectly awful diet, Donald Trump probably doesn’t have a lot of years left.
I believe the year 2023 could very well be the worst year of Donald Trump’s soon to be miserably short life. If everybody in government does their jobs we will finally see Trump publicly humiliated and forced to live in deplorable circumstances. We will see the smug, sanctimonious, arrogant looks wiped from the faces of his criminal children. We will see all of MAGA repudiated.
I can’t wait. I want revenge for the endless abuse I’ve endured these six long years from these criminal scumbags, and I am sure, brothers and sisters, so do you. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.