Another week, another hearing. More bombshells, intrigue, screaming matches, madcap schemes, America’s mayor and a bunch of ridiculousness. Where did all of this take place? In the People’s House, of course, at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. in Washington, DC. The White House.

The House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol promised Americans that they had the goods and did not disappoint. On Tuesday, the committee led by U.S. Reps. Benny G. Thompson (D-MS), chairman, and Liz Cheney (R-WY), vice chair, continued to present the case against former president Donald J. Trump and his cohorts, who fed an angry mob of Trump supporters inciteful rhetoric, which in turn fueled the deadly riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

The seventh committee hearing opened with a recap of the fact that the former president understood he had lost the 2020 election to Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, and that despite the many frivolous lawsuits brought to federal courts across the country citing massive voter fraud and other election conspiracies, given the lack of evidence and “merit,” Trump appointed judges across the country threw out every case. On Dec. 14, 2020, the electoral college formally acknowledged the certification of Biden as the president-elect. And if things were not interesting enough in the Oval Office, the circus really showed up and showed out.

One of the most anticipated hearing witnesses was former White House counsel Pat Cipollone. He corroborated information from other witnesses and further hemmed Trump in as the chief manipulator who attempted to steal an election and overturn democracy. Cipollone gave exclusive firsthand insight into the circus troop that had surrounded Trump and egged him on in the fantasy of an election win.

When efforts to use federal courts to help in stealing the election from Biden failed, this group that Cheney said some Trump advisers referred to as “the crazies” – featuring the nefarious hijinks of “America’s Mayor” Rudy Giuliani, along with attorney Sydney Powell, political consultant Roger Stone, retired Army General and former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, former Acting Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Clark, and former Trump lawyer John Eastman – moved on to Plan D. 

Remember, Plan A devised by Giuliani on election night was for Trump to insist that all counting of votes cease and declare himself the winner. Plan B was to claim that there was rampant voter fraud, vote switching and ballot dumping at polling centers around the country, most notably in Detroit, Philadelphia, and the state of Georgia. Empty lawsuit filings were a part of this plan.

Since neither of those worked, Plan C, another bombshell at Tuesday’s hearing, was hatched. It was the hairbrained scheme concocted by Powell to have voting machines across the country seized based on phony allegations of voter fraud. To get this part of the circus rolling, Trump made the executive decision to appoint Powell as special counsel of a new committee. In this new role, Powell would somehow seize all the Dominion company’s electronic voting machines, have them declared faulty and head up an investigation.

Cipollone, the rare voice of reason in these Trump White House meetings, loudly rejected this idea and Powell’s appointment. Every plan that the Trump circus devised came up empty until the secret meeting in the Oval Office on Dec.18, 2020. If all else fails, break the angry insurrectionist mob glass: Plan D.

“GRACIOUSLY CONCEDE” Preparations for the Jan. 6 “Stop the Steal” kicked into high gear with the conclave of “crazies” Powell, Flynn, Giuliani, and former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne, all of whom who had to sneak into the Oval Office through the back door of a White House junior aide’s office. Cipollone found out about this clandestine caucus of conspirators and quickly crashed it.

But this core group of individuals is significant to the plot against the country because they were the voices who caught Trump’s ear and were willing to do whatever it would take to keep him comfortably seated in the White House for another term. This madness and treachery turned into chaos and domestic violence that moved from the Oval Office to the private Yellow Oval in the family quarters, as Cipollone and other frustrated White House aides who urged Trump to “graciously concede” clashed with Giuliani, Powell and company. There were obscenities and all kinds of stink bomb words hurled. All in the White House. And all because one person refused to accept that he had lost.

What was interesting about Tuesday’s hearing was not just the tidbits and behind-the-scenes blow-by-blow of what was happening inside the White House. Americans were waiting for the transition of power from the outgoing administration to the incoming one to begin. Yet in real time, while all the shenanigans were going on, right-wing White supremacist militant groups were uniting and organizing to answer the Trump Twitter call for the meet up of a lifetime. The Select Committee refreshed our collective memories with a Trump tweet stating that Jan. 6 would be D-Day and it was “going to be wild.” This tweet went out around 1 in the morning after the clownery inside the White House, as the scheme took shape.

TWEETIE-DEE

Well, for sure, Jan. 6, 2021, was “wild” and deadly. A former Twitter employee provided a behind-the-scenes glimpse at how executives at the social media juggernaut mishandled – or more accurately – turned a decidedly blind eye to the inflammatory tweets by the former president, including those leading to Jan.

6. Twitter executives were aware of the far-right militia’s violent comments following Trump’s incendiary tweets, and did nothing until it was too late.

The Trump circus finally had a plan that just might work. A violent insurrection mob. A riot. America knows a thing or two about how to overthrow a government. The first time it occurred was in 1776. Hence the cries of “1776,” “revolution” and “new Civil War” by militia groups such as the Proud Boys, Florida Three Percenters, and the Oath Keepers. A second successful insurrection occurred in 1898 Wilmington, NC.

The third was underway. On the evening of Jan. 5, 2021, a rally in a park near the White House was the warmup to the big D-Day. Trump had the Oval Office doors opened so that he could hear his friends Stone, altright radio host Alex Jones and Flynn address the insurrectionist crowd that had gathered, primed by falsehoods regarding a stolen election, and conspiracy theories birthed by Jones, right-wing talk radio and online vloggers, waiting to make the ultimate sacrifice and disrupt the country while claiming to be patriots.