as a huge surprise given the well-established history inside trump world of pressuring potential witnesses in key investigations. washington post lays it out like this, quote. evidence across multiple state, federal and congressional investigations points to a similar pattern. trump and his close allies privately shower potential witnesses with flattery and attention extending vague assurances that staying loyal to trump would be better than crossing him. meanwhile, trump publicly blasts those who offer testimony against him in bluntly personal terms offering a clear example to others of the consequences of stepping out of line. the new york times offers another view of this type of carrot and stick witness pressure campaign reporting this, quote, former president trump s political organization and his allies have paid for or promised to finance the legal fees of more than a dozen witnesses called in the congressional investigation into the january 6th attack, raising legal
bear kind of charges. it s serious for the department and the reports go far beyond what other cases have resulted in convictions for witness tampering. the statement is and the legal test is are you trying to influence? how else can you interpret those kinds of statements? the history of donald trump trying to influence investigations that s public facing when he was president, frank, i think starts with the comey dinner, you know. let mike flinn go. let mike flinn go, it s trying to influence someone who lied to the fbi about his conversations with sergei kislyak. donald trump wants that investigation to be called off and ultimately pardons him at the end of a prosecution and two guilt i pleas. talk about the pattern and
of his investigation wide open as stated explicitly by one of his top investigators andrew weissmann back in november 2020. quote, we amassed ample evidence to support a charge that trump obstructed justice. that view is widely shared. shortly after our report was issued, hundreds of former prosecutors concluded that the evidence supported such a charge. the evidence includes trump s efforts to influence the outcome of a deliberating jury in the manafort trial and is holding out the hope for a pardon to thwart witnesses from cooperating with our investigation. can anyone even fathom a legitimate reason to dangle a pardon? today in many respects we re seeing history repeat itself with the january 6th committee facing some of those very same questions about the now ex-president and his apparent efforts to obstruct their congressional investigation into his alleged crimes against our democracy. it s where we start today with
there are risks that all of the members are taking here by engaging in this investigation, but according to some recent polling that has been circulating amongst progressive groups and was commissioned by these groups in order to help democrats who are running in vulnerable district with their messaging with regard to the january 6th investigation, the committee is breaking through. it shows that there s been a jump in an increase democrats and independents from 8% overall according to the research conducted by lake and that it s actually breaking through to republicans, as well. there s been a 16% jump amongst republicans who didn t support trump s second impeachment and now support what the january 6th investigation is doing and we re only half way through the investigation and cassidy hutchinson i think marks the half way point for them and they re likely to hold out bombshells for the finale. i didn t mean to suggest on
legal and ethical questions about whether the former president may be influencing testimony with the direct bearing on him. it is not the first time questions about witness tampering have come up in the course of a trump-linked investigation. efforts to influence witnesses comprised key elements of special counsel robert mueller s obstruction of justice report which examine this, quote, public attacks on the investigation, non-public efforts to control it and efforts in both public and private to encourage witnesses not to cooperate with the investigation. the mueller report also acknowledges this, quote, the president s efforts to influence the investigation were largely unsuccessful and the purposes persons who surrounded the president did not cooperate. robert mueller very much very much left the obstruction part