Mick Mulvaney on Jan. 6 Hearings: When Republicans Testify Against Other Republicans, ‘Republicans Should Pay Attention’
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Mick Mulvaney hasn’t quite yet achieved the status of Howard Baker, but he appears to be making a serious bid.
The former Tennessee Senator became famous for placing patriotism before party loyalty during the Watergate scandal, and his calling out former President Richard Nixon eventually led to the first and only resignation of a sitting U.S. president.
Similarly, Mulvaney wrote a column for the Charlotte Observer that criticizes Republicans for abjectly ignoring the stunning revelations that have recently emerged from the January 6th Select Committee hearings. The fact that Mulvaney served as Chief of Staff under the Trump administration, makes his interparty admonition even more noteworthy.
Mulvaney opens by reiterating comments he made via Twitter following the stunning testimony of Cassidy Hutchinson, a top aide of Mark Meadows, also known as another former Chief of Staff under former President Donald Trump. Mulvaney writes:
The significance of last week’s Congressional Jan. 6 committee hearings cannot be overstated.
For the first time, evidence was presented that former President Trump knew some of the protesters were armed before encouraging them to go the Capitol, that right-wing extremist rioters communicated directly with the White House, that key Presidential advisers requested pardons, that the chief White House lawyer was concerned about getting “charged with every crime imaginable,” and that someone within Trump world may be trying to tamper with committee witnesses.
Serious stuff. But roughly half the country — the Republican half — isn’t watching. They object that the hearings are a made-for-TV show trial, designed to attack the former president and salvage the Democrats’ dismal prospects in the upcoming midterms.
And while he does allow that Republican critics are “correct” in dismissing some parts of the Select Committee’s hearings, he comes back with this salient point:
“That is because, despite all of the flaws in the structure of the heavily Democrat committee, almost all of the evidence presented so far is coming from eminently credible sources: Republicans.” He then proceeds to list who he believes to be credible Republicans, including former AG Bill Barr, Republican Speaker of the Arizona House Rusty Bowers, and the aforementioned Cassidy Hutchinson. None of whom can credibly be diagnosed with “Trump Derangement Syndrome.”
Mulvaney ends his opinion piece with “When Republicans start testifying under oath that other Republicans lost the 2020 election and then broke the law to try to change that, Republicans should pay attention. Everyone should.”
Read the entire column here.
