In its final days before Republicans presumably shut it down after they take control of the U.S. House, the January 6 Select Committee has been busily releasing transcripts of interviews it conducted with key figures involved in the events leading up to and during the insurrection. To view the interviews, see here.
Also note that, among those interviews is one with former Attorney General of Virginia Ken Cuccinelli, who served as the “Senior Official Performing the Duties of the Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security from 2019 to 2021,” and thus *should* have been very much involved in keeping tabs on the plotting leading up to 1/6/21, and in taking appropriate actions to prevent violence, disruption to the electoral process, etc. from occurring. And yet…we all see what actually happened, and what officials like Cuccinelli failed to prevent.
With that background, see this Twitter thread by Yahoo News investigative correspondent Jana Winter on some of the key takeaways from Cuccinelli’s testimony. Very disturbing. Also, as you’re reading the thread, keep in mind:
- Cuccinelli – who has compared immigrants to rats, ranted (falsely) that we’re being “invaded,” etc. – is a right-wing extremist through and through, as we all witnessed during his disastrous four years as Attorney General of Virginia. For instance, Cuccinelli waged war on climate science for years, including a relentless and disgraceful assault against leading climate scientist Michael Mann; plus… he’s a raging (and raving) homophobe, a “birther,” a “states rights” extremist, a tinfoil hat wacko who believes the government is tracking his kids via Social Security numbers, etc.
- Under (in part) Cuccinelli’s “leadership,” DHS failed to act in the weeks leading up to the January 6, 2021 insurrection, with “attempts to sound the alarm…shut down, delayed or flat-out rejected at every turn, according to the analyst’s written account provided to inspector general investigators and an unredacted version of that final investigative report and other materials obtained by Yahoo News.”
- “Cuccinelli had [a] meeting w Trump in [the Oval Office] on Jan 5 about “the role of congress in counting electoral votes”. No one else present at meeting.”
- “When asked about criticism DHS I&A got over their Portland intel operations and open source intelligence reports on journalists, ex DHS Ken Cuccinelli went with the ‘but FBI has been doing worse stuff for a lot longer’ response (lol but not lol).”
- Cuccinelli’s interview with the 1/6 committee “devolves into Antifa,blaming Maxine Waters etc but harshest criticism is of “the Secretary of the Army, who seemed to be in charge of freaking out—that was his job, and he did it very thoroughly—had no ever-loving idea what he was doing”.
- Cuccinelli claimed he didn’t remember “Trump repeatedly calling the 2020 election ‘rigged'” even though “Trump used the word ‘rigged’ in 3 tweets 24 hours after losing the election” as well as many times leading up to the election. Which means that Cuccinelli – who’s an extremist, bigot, etc. but is NOT stupid – must be lying about this.
- In August 2020, as the NY Times reported, “The acting secretary of homeland security, Chad F. Wolf, and his deputy, Kenneth T. Cuccinelli, were appointed to their posts in violation of federal law, Congress’s watchdog determined.”
- As the WaPo reported back in July 2022, “Text messages for former President Donald Trump’s acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf and acting deputy secretary Ken Cuccinelli are missing for a key period leading up to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, according to four people briefed on the matter and internal emails.” As 1/6/21 select committee chair Rep. Bennie Thompson put it, “It is extremely troubling that the issue of deleted text messages related to the January 6 attack on the Capitol is not limited to the Secret Service, but also includes Chad Wolf and Ken Cuccinelli, who were running DHS at the time.”
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