If you think so, you really must read the attached letter Jerry Nadler just sent to Hope Hicks, requesting — that’s the formal way of saying “you’d better show up or else” — she reappear before the Committee because her previous testimony was maybe not entirely, um, factual. Truthful. Honest.
And lying to Congress is a criminal offense. Of which the letter reminds her.
Let me point out a couple of things:
First, a lot of people yelled about how Hope Hicks didn’t say anything to the Committee, how she referred constantly to a lawyer sitting next to her and how she refused to answer many questions because of, well, you know, Trump didn’t want her to.
Well, she said stuff, enough stuff to compare to documentary evidence.
Second, yesterday Judge William Pauley, the federal judge presiding over the Michael Cohen, et al. (or not) case in the Southern District of New York, released a Memorandum and Order responding to a request of the New York Times and other news media, that the up-to-then redacted material the FBI found in their search of Cohen’s offices, etc. be released in full.
Pauley agreed, writing, “The campaign finance violations discussed in the Materials are a matter of national importance. Now that the Government’s investigation into those violations has concluded, it is time that every American has an opportunity to scrutinize the Materials.”
Which I want to read as, “If the SDNY is closing this investigation without indicting Trump because of that fucking Office of Legal Counsel nonsense about not indicting a sitting president, I’m really pissed off so I want everybody to read this and get pissed off along with me.”
Here’s what Pauley ordered: “Accordingly, the Government is directed to file the July 15, 2019 status report and the Materials on the public docket on July 18, 2019 at 11:00 a.m.”
That was today. And the material was released today.
And Jerry Nadler’s letter is also dated today, July 18, 2019.
This means that during the afternoon, the members and counsel on the Judiciary Committee read through pages and pages of records seized by the FBI, noted and pulled out every time Hicks was involved in phone calls and messaging over the campaign finance violations, compared all of these to her statements during her testimony, and laid out all of the times she lied.
Or, as Nadler says, as would any lawyer who’s so got the goods he doesn’t have to hoot and holler about it, “The evidence unsealed today…raises substantial questions about the accuracy of each of these statements.”
And then he goes on to list all of the statements Hicks made.
Pulling all this together and putting it into this letter took speed and precision.
There.
