January 6 Was a Violent Insurrection; It Was Also a Fraud Against the GOP Faithful
The word “subpoena” appears 84 times in the Jack Smith deposition (see my more general post describing how Jim Jordan tried to bury his own cowardice disclosed in Smith’s deposition here):
- Subpoenas to Jack Smith (by any party): 7
- Subpoenas for GOP toll records (questions by GOPers): 55
- Subpoenas for GOP toll records (questions by Dems): 2
- Other subpoenas for GOP witnesses (questions by GOPers): 1
- Subpoenas from the stolen documents investigation (asked by Dems): 19
As that tally makes clear, the vast majority of those references came during the GOP time, focused on the subpoenas for 10 members of Congress, one of two fake scandals that Chuck Grassley created in advance of Smith’s testimony.
There were no questions — zero — about the other scandal Chuck Grassley created, that Jack Smith had subpoenaed (Grassley falsely claimed) records, mostly financial, for 430 “targets”. Even Chuck Grassley, in a December 8 post laying out the “oversight” he plans to do in 2026, barely mentioned those subpoenas.
The closest the House GOP came in last month’s Smith deposition was this question about claims that right wingers were debanked (as if being an insurrectionist were not reason enough for a bank to cut ties with someone):
Q Where they’re basically told by their bank that they need to go find a different bank. And there is a long list of, you know, Trump allied, you know, officials that were subpoenaed for the grand jury, that were, you know, brought into your investigation that claim they had been debanked and that Capital One told them to go find a different bank and numerous other banks.
Do you know anything about that?
A No, I do not.
Q Okay. So your office didn’t have any communications with banks urging a bank to separate from any of their customers?
A I have no knowledge of that.
Q Are you aware of that allegations, or is this the first you’re hearing of it?
A I’m trying to think. I didn’t know what the term meant when you first said it, so, I mean, in the scheme of the world, have I heard of the word debanking? Maybe. But if you’d asked me to define it when you first said it, I don’t think I could have.
Q Okay. But have you — so you haven’t heard that allegation that some of the folks in President Trump’s inner circle have complained that they, you know, were kicked out of their bank?
As a result, the GOP did not invite (and Democrats did not think to invite) Jack Smith to explain a slew of subpoenas he sent out, subpoenas that constituted new prongs of the investigation and expanded prongs of work done in 2021 about finances.
As I laid out here, those subpoenas clearly addressed known prongs of the investigation into how Trump raised tons of money based on false claims and later funneled the money to people who had remained loyal through the attack on democracy.
Five pages — which appear to match the title of the document, Arctic Frost Bank Record Subpoenas — show subpoena returns with dates long after the date of the summary, going through a subpoena pertaining to Jeffrey Clark and John Eastman to Fidelity completed on July 6, 2023. [Note: The release of this document exposes the banks of dozens of Trump associates, a fairly alarming privacy violation.]
The five pages of subpoenas focus on several topics, largely the following:
- J6 $
- Wire fraud
- Misappropriation
- Payments to lawyers
- Bogus investigations
- Obstruction
- Credit reports
Most of this traces several prongs of investigation that were publicly reported at the time — largely picking up efforts of the January 6 Committee — showing that Trump raised money in the guise of election integrity, but then paid it to people like Brad Parscale or Dan Scavino.
Based on dates, this appears to be a key focus of Jack Smith once he was appointed
After squawking loudly (and to a significant extent, inaccurately) about the subpoenas, after doxing great swaths of the Republican Party, congressional Republicans decided they didn’t want to talk about the lucrative grift Trump took them for, in which Republican faithful paid Trump to lie.
As a result, the closest the full day deposition came to explaining how Trump abused the faith of his supporters was this exchange.
Q So did you develop evidence that President Trump, you know, was responsible for the violence at the Capitol on January 6th?
A So our view of the evidence was that he caused it and that he exploited it and 8 that it was foreseeable to him.
Q But you don’t have any evidence that he instructed people to crash the Capitol, do you?
A As I said, our evidence is that he in the weeks leading up to January 6th created a level of distrust. He used that level of distrust to get people to believe fraud claims that weren’t true. He made false statements to State legislatures, to his supporters in all sorts of contexts and was aware in the days leading up to January 6th that his supporters were angry when he invited them and then he directed them to the Capitol. Now, once they were at the Capitol and once the attack on the Capitol happened, he refused to stop it. He instead issued a tweet that without question in my mind endangered the life of his own Vice President. And when the violence was going on, he had to be pushed repeatedly by his staff members to do anything to quell it.
And then even afterwards he directed co-conspirators to make calls to Members of Congress, people who had were his political allies, to further delay the proceedings.
Trump deliberately stoked distrust to get his supporters to attack democracy.
January 6 was a violent insurrection. Never forget that.
But it was also an enormous fraud on the Republican Party.
They may have saved themselves some time by asking Jack Smith directly,
“Do you have anything on me Jack?”
“But it was also an enormous fraud on the Republican Party.”
Paraphrasing George Orwell: “We have always been a fraud on the Republican Party”
You can go back to that Lee Atwater quote to witness how that’s nothing new. Reagan’s “Welfare Queens” and Nixon’s “War on Drugs” were also both frauds. Trump has simply brought this to its logical conclusion, which is why the alleged “political party” that is GOP must be destroyed, because the worst lies are the ones you tell yourself.
Nothing batshit happens without the buttkissers, bigots, and jackals surrounding Mount Lardass.
Tru*p maybe be the metastasized tumor, but our environment is what created and sustains this virulence.
If I’m the dems, I go after every law breaker EXCEPT the Tru*p tumor. Fatty gets stronger when subjected to chemo – his barnacles, not so much.
Stop going after the head of the snake – use agent orange on the environs to stop President Orange.
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I had a soccer coach who did this—when someone was being an idiot, everyone had to run laps—except the idiot, who had to sit on a chair in the middle and watch. They’ll quickly find out how loyalty with Epstein’s bestie, as with Putin, is very much a one-way street.
OMG, LOL: (Smith) “I’m trying to think. I didn’t know what the term meant when you first said it, so, I mean, in the scheme of the world, have I heard of the word debanking? Maybe. But if you’d asked me to define it when you first said it, I don’t think I could have.”
So good!
I don’t have the stomach to read the whole transcript, but in every excerpt published here or elsewhere, the disciplined precision of his language and thinking is impressive to me. I’ve done my share of depos, and been deposed myself a time or three. It’s really hard for a witness not to slip.
Thanks for this, Marcy.
The MINORITY counsel asked about TRUMP-created “distrust” beginning at page 141:
[Also, I think this is the link you meant to post at “As I laid out”: ]
https://www.emptywheel.net/2025/09/17/chuck-grassley-complains-that-doj-investigated-why-tpusa-sent-80-busses-to-a-riot/
And… Happy New Year!
I watched the first hour of questioning by the majority counsel, who was pathetically ineffective and whiny–perhaps this was a given for GOPers who came crawling back to Trump making excuses in the aftermath of Jan 6.
Interesting to me is the contrast between the Republicans’ professed concern about Speech or Debate Clause issues in this context and what I’m sure will be their continued total lack of concern about Hegseth’s threatened reprisals against Mark Kelly.
Was it after South African apartheid ended that they held hearings where there would be no consequences; they just wanted to get the deeds and the stories out into the public and the record? Public confessions basically with no consequences? I think we need this for when Trump is gone.
Truth and Reconciliation without accountability / consequences for these scoundrels and miscreants? Not good enough.
Does anyone really believe accountability is the reality for any of these people? Seriously, not hopes, not ‘but it’s what’s right.’ Actual reality.
Nope.
Remember Nixon? That was the beginning of this shit.
None of these people will be held accountable. Reality. Getting these people to tell their stories would peel off some future support/money from GOP.
Not as sanguine about that, because for elitist techbros like Thiel, Sack and Elon (etc.) they’re in line with doing what ‘needs to be done’ for their libertarian paradise. That’s why they back MAGA in the first place. Their ability to give via dark money has to be crushed, which is a lot harder after Citizen’s United. It may require the removal of the ‘corporations are people’ precedent as well, i.e. Santa Clara County v Southern Pacific.
If there is no accountability there is less than no value in Truth or a temporary Reconciliation. Where we are today is a logical outcome of a lack of accountability from the Republican party from Nixon on. They have every motivation to continue on their path, because it works.
Thanks for that study in abject capitulation, but I decline to participate.
If you believe in an afterlife, LaMalfa is being held accountable now.
(He had some kind of medical emergency Monday night, was taken to a hospital, and died during surgery. So far that’s all we know.)
Along with Grassley creating false scandals, I seem to recall Sen John Kennedy and Pam Bondi working together to make the phone subpoenas into a scandal during her Senate testimony last October.
It’s a false narrative they’ve tried to concoct, Gym Jordan tried to also—Jack Smith knocked the legs out of that argument though. “I didn’t choose those numbers—Donald trump did.”
SMITH Deposition
Transcript: https://judiciary.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/republicans-judiciary.house.gov/files/2025-12/Smith-Depo-Transcript_Redacted-w-Errata.pdf
VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lR-bhPzQYUE
Affinity
Tell them what they want to hear,
Build affinity,
Give them all my MAGA cheer,
Say I’m divinity.
They all try to gather near
in my vicinity,
When they make it in my sphere,
I credit my own trinity.
It’s me, myself and I,
And my masculinity,
And if Jeff Epstein happened by,
We’d lure virginity.
My Chief of Staff says I disrupt,
I have an itch to scratch,
Sometimes I may be abrupt,
But I have a mark to catch.
I know how to get tittupped,
I haven’t met my match,
A few Truths need re-upped
in a raging night dispatch.
To be pardoned, or to be pupped,
The inmate coffee klatsch
thinks the whole idea is bankrupt,
I say: Grab ‘em by the snatch.
Why not start working on “Poor Jud” from Oklahoma? It’ll be ready when the big day comes.
2:00 PM The CAPITOL on 1/6/21
https://xcancel.com/MacFarlaneNews/status/1460433188074016771 [PHOTO]
2:06 PM on 1/6/21
https://www.emptywheel.net/2021/01/06/dems-in-disarray-as-the-gop-fractures-over-trump/#comment-873979
2:20 PM on 1/6/21
https://xcancel.com/igorbobic/status/1346898433689399297 [PHOTO]
2:36 PM on 1/6/21
https://xcancel.com/MacFarlaneNews/status/1736178141478216151 [PHOTO]
I’ll stop now, but here’s a THREAD I did 2 years ago:
[Replace “Twitter dot com” and “Nitter dot com” links, with “xcancel dot com”]
https://www.emptywheel.net/2024/01/06/stand-back-and-stand-by-jack-smiths-hidden-cards/#comment-1031835
Ruben Gallego flagged a page on the WH website for calling the cop who shot Babbitt a murder (and also claiming no cops died).
https://bsky.app/profile/gallegoforarizona.com/post/3mbrnt5o5jx2t
And Kinziger called the Rs who have been protecting the insurrectionists “cowards”, for, among other things, pretending it never endangered them.
To Kinzinger’s point, that video of Hawley’s sprint will never get old.
Wow. If charges for all the stochastic, terroristic violence they’ve incited against fellow Americans are ever brought, that page should be Exhibit A.
Trump’s lies killed Ashli Babbitt; the bullet was just a side effect.