Activism

COMMENTARY: Will Cassidy Hutchinson Shame Republicans to Tell the Truth?

The hearings are intended to help us understand what really happened when a mob nearly prevented a presidential election from being certified. But we can’t get to that until someone has the courage to tell the truth.

Published

3 years ago

July 3, 2022

Oakland Post

Emil Guillermo is a journalist and commentator. He does a talk show on www.amok.com

Emil Guillermo is a journalist and commentator. He has a webshow on www.amok.com

By Emil Guillermo

We got our fireworks early this week at the Jan. 6 Select Committee Hearings in Congress.

And boy, did we need them.

And it needed to be someone on the MAGA inside, like Cassidy Hutchinson, 25, a white female conservative Republican.

You want to know what it was like on the day of Jan. 6 from within the White House? Hutchinson was in the West Wing, a top aide to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.

And so, Hutchinson did what even her old boss has failed to do — cooperate with the committee.

At the hastily set up hearing this week, under oath, garbed in a white blazer, she was like a symbol of light.

She had the courage to break the Trump code and speak out.

We learned that the morning of the big rally on Jan. 6, White House Counsel Pat Cipollone told Hutchinson to “make sure we don’t go to the Capitol.”

The consequences? Hutchinson said Cipollone told her that “we’re going to get charged with every crime imaginable if we make that movement happen.”

Hutchinson testified it wasn’t the first time Cipollone mentioned that going back to the Capitol would look like they were obstructing the Electoral College count or generally inciting a riot.

But as the day of Jan. 6 evolved, Hutchinson said that Trump knew the crowd was violent and armed, and that once the rally attendees made it to the Capitol, Trump wanted to be there. Perhaps to admire his handiwork?

Hutchinson testified about an incident after the rally in the presidential limo, “the Beast,” when Trump was told by Secret Service chief Bobby Engel that they were going back to the White House and not the Capitol.

“I’m the f—ing president,” Trump said according to Hutchinson’s testimony. Then Trump tried to grab the wheel and physically threatened Engel.

Is any of this activity criminal? Let the Justice Department decide. Our lower bar as Americans is to ask if this unhinged man is a person who should have ever been president.

Shaye Moss and Ruby Freeman

Before this week, two Black women emerged as the stars of the Jan. 6 Select Committee Hearings: former Georgia election worker Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, and her mother, Ruby Freeman, who was falsely accused by no less than Donald Trump himself of being a “vote scammer.”

More than legalistic mumbo jumbo, the hearings have detailed the real victims of Trump’s lies. It’s regular people like you and me.

Moss and Freeman were called out by Trump and Rudy Giuliani in the former president’s manic drive to change the results of an election that he wrongly believed was stolen from him.

But as Moss and Freeman testified on June 21, their lives were turned upside down by Trump’s nonsense.

Moss had been an election worker for 10 years, happy to connect people with democracy. But once the false accusations were made, everything changed.

She told the committee she gained 60 pounds.

“I just don’t do nothing anymore,” she said, in tears. “I second guess everything that I do. It’s affected my life in a major way — in every way. All because of lies.”

Trump’s “Big Lie” destroyed a sense of self-worth for many in our democracy. People like Moss and her mother, known as Lady Ruby.

But we all knew that testimony alone isn’t enough to make all Americans understand just how wrong Trump and his cohorts were on Jan. 6.

We need people on the inside like Trump attorney Pat Cipollone and others who have either plead ‘the fifth,’ or totally ignored the committee, to have the courage to break the Trump code and tell the truth.

That also includes all Republicans who continue to support and see Trump as anything but the man who lost and lied.

For the sake of our democracy, they all need to have the courage of Cassidy Hutchinson.

Emil Guillermo is a journalist and commentator. He has a webshow on www.amok.com

Oakland Post

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Activism

Remembering George Floyd

BLACKPRESSUSA NEWSWIRE — Minnesota State Attorney General Keith Ellison acknowledges that the Floyd case five years ago involved a situation in which due process was denied, and five years later, the president is currently dismissing “due process. “The Minnesota Atty General also says, “Trump is trying to attack constitutional rule, attacking congressional authority and judicial decision-making.” George Floyd was an African American man killed by police who knocked on his neck and on his back, preventing him from breathing.

Published

6 hours ago

June 2, 2025

Oakland Post

Mural showing the portrait of George Floyd in Mauerpark in Berlin. To the left of the portrait the lettering "I can't Breathe" was added, on the right side the three hashtags #GeorgeFloyd, #Icantbreathe and #Sayhisname. The mural was completed by Eme Street Art (facebook name) / Eme Free Thinker (signature) on 29 May 2020. (Wikimedia Commons)

By April Ryan
BlackPressUSA Newswire

“The president’s been very clear he has no intentions of pardoning Derek Chauvin, and it’s not a request that we’re looking at,” confirms a senior staffer at the Trump White House. That White House response results from public hope, including from a close Trump ally, Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene. The timing of Greene’s hopes coincides with the Justice Department’s recent decision to end oversight of local police accused of abuse. It also falls on the fifth anniversary of the police-involved death of George Floyd on May 25th. The death sparked national and worldwide outrage and became a transitional moment politically and culturally, although the outcry for laws on police accountability failed.

The death forced then-Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden to focus on deadly police force and accountability. His efforts while president to pass the George Floyd Justice in policing act failed. The death of George Floyd also put a spotlight on the Black community, forcing then-candidate Biden to choose a Black woman running mate. Kamala Harris ultimately became vice president of the United States alongside Joe Biden. Minnesota State Attorney General Keith Ellison prosecuted the cases against the officers involved in the death of Floyd. He remembers,” Trump was in office when George Floyd was killed, and I would blame Trump for creating a negative environment for police-community relations. Remember, it was him who said when the looting starts, the shooting starts, it was him who got rid of all the consent decrees that were in place by the Obama administration.”

In 2025, Police-involved civilian deaths are up by “about 100 to about 11 hundred,” according to Ellison. Ellison acknowledges that the Floyd case five years ago involved a situation in which due process was denied, and five years later, the president is currently dismissing “due process. “The Minnesota Atty General also says, “Trump is trying to attack constitutional rule, attacking congressional authority and judicial decision-making.” George Floyd was an African-American man killed by police who knocked on his neck and on his back, preventing him from breathing. During those minutes on the ground, Floyd cried out for his late mother several times. Police subdued Floyd for an alleged counterfeit $20 bill.