Trump’s March 2 self-own: the attack case got uglier

Edition · March 2, 2022

Trump’s March 2 self-own: the attack case got uglier

A committee filing, a fleeing ex-aide, and the same old lie machine kept working overtime.

March 2, 2022 was a bad day for the Trump ecosystem on the January 6 front. The House select committee said its evidence supported a criminal-conspiracy theory about Trump and his attempt to stop the transfer of power, while former aide Peter Navarro skipped a scheduled deposition and signaled he wanted to slow-walk accountability. It was not a court loss for Trump himself, but it was another day when the legal and political walls around the post-election scheme got a little tighter.

Closing take

The big picture is simple: Trump’s post-election operation kept producing new records, new subpoenas, and new headaches. That is not what clean hands look like.

Ranked by how bad the fuckup was

5 stars means maximum fallout. 1 star means a smaller self-own.

Story

January 6 panel says its evidence supports a criminal conspiracy theory around Trump’s election plot

Election conspiracy Confidence 4/5

★★★★☆Fuckup rating 4/5 Serious fuckup

The House select committee told a federal court that the evidence it had gathered gave it a good-faith basis to believe Trump and his campaign may have violated multiple laws in their effort to stop the certification of the 2020 vote. That is not a conviction, but it is a stark public escalation from a congressional investigation to language that sounds a lot like an outline for prosecutors. For Trump, it kept the central post-election story where it has always been most dangerous: in the documentary record, not in his rallies.

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Story

Peter Navarro blows off a January 6 committee deposition and keeps Trump’s obstruction mess alive

Deposition dodge Confidence 4/5

★★★☆☆Fuckup rating 3/5 Major mess

Former Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro did not show up for a scheduled deposition before the January 6 committee on March 2, 2022. Navarro had been subpoenaed over his role in the post-election pressure campaign, and skipping the appearance only deepened the sense that Trump’s orbit was choosing defiance over cooperation. It was a smaller headline than the committee’s filing, but it fit the same ugly pattern: the closer you got to the Trump team’s election scheme, the more the lawyers started sweating.

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