William Saletan: “One of Donald Trump’s favorite tricks is arm-twisting officials into announcing an investigation of his political opponent. He doesn’t really care about the investigation, because investigations are about facts. All he cares about is the announcement, which he can use to smear his opponent.”

“In the Jan. 6 plot, he did it again…”

“It’s the same play, again and again. Trump never cares about the facts. All he wants is a useful narrative. And for that, he just needs a statement. Leave the rest to him.”

Charlie Sykes: “On Thursday we got a stark reminder that farcical fascism is still fascism.”

“Yes, Jeffrey Clark was a clownish Iago; the theories about Italian satellites were certifiably insane; Trump’s election lies were absurd and easily debunked; and the smoking guns are right there in plain sight. But even so, it was a damned close run thing.”

“The President of the United States was moments away from installing a seditionist crony as the nation’s top law enforcement officer and using the Department of Justice to execute his coup.”

“The line held. Thank God. But that line was thin, and it might not be there the next time around.”

A documentary filmmaker said that former president Donald Trump described those who participated in the January 6 Capitol attack as “smart” during a defiant interview last spring, the Washington Post reports.

“The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol plans to unveil new evidence on Thursday about how President Donald Trump tried to manipulate the Justice Department to help him cling to power after he lost the 2020 election,” the New York Times reports.

“At its fifth public hearing this month, scheduled for 3 p.m. on Thursday, the panel plans to hear testimony from three former top Justice Department officials who are expected to lay out the ways in which Mr. Trump tried to misuse the attorney general’s office to overturn his defeat, an extraordinary instance of a president interfering with the nation’s law enforcement apparatus for his own personal ends.”

Washington Post: “Unbeknown to the public at the time, a handful of Justice officials scrambled to prevent Trump from ousting the acting head of the department, Jeffrey Rosen, if Rosen didn’t agree to have the agency publicly suggest the 2020 election results were invalid.”

Edward Luce: “Pity Merrick Garland. Whichever path America’s attorney-general takes — to prosecute Donald Trump or not — entails great risk. Putting the former president on trial would hasten the country’s drift towards political violence. Letting him walk away would make another coup attempt more likely. Garland is damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t. Either route could endanger U.S. democracy.”

“The evidence amassed by the U.S. House of Representatives’ January 6 committee is making it much harder to turn a blind eye. Garland’s quandary is acute. The standard of proof for a criminal conviction is considerably higher than lay observers of the January 6 protests might assume. A botched prosecution would make Trump stronger and even help re-elect him. When you strike at a king — even a former one — you must kill him.”

Ivanka Trump, the elder daughter of former President Donald Trump, told a documentary film crew in the middle of December 2020 that her father should “continue to fight until every legal remedy is exhausted” because people were questioning “the sanctity of our elections,” the New York Times reports.

The video “was striking for how it shows Ms. Trump using a different tone in describing her father’s efforts to overturn the outcome than she did in the portion of her deposition to the House committee that has been made public so far.”

“I hope he has recovered because as you know, he fell off his bicycle. No, I’m serious. I hope he’s okay. Fell off a bicycle. I make this pledge to you today — I will never, ever ride a bicycle.”

— Donald Trump, quoted by Business Standard.

Former President Donald Trump called into Newsmax to defend attendees of his now-infamous Jan. 6, 2021 rally that turned into a riot at the Capitol.

Said Trump: “It was the largest group I think that I’ve ever seen or made a speech to. I’ve never seen anything like it and there they were well behaved. So many, so many people. Nobody ever talks about that.”

“The irony is that Pence was arguably the primary enabler of Trump… He was the mainstream traditional conservative Republican who would go to donors and not just defend Trump and his policies, but with a straight face insist that Donald J. Trump was a good man.”

— GOP strategist Rob Stutzman, quoted by the New York Times.

Former Vice President Mike Pence discussed President Joe Biden committing “so many falsehoods” with former Trump adviser Larry Kudlow on Fox Business:

KUDLOW: Have you ever seen a president who refuses to accept blame, and I want to add to that, commits so many falsehoods? I’m being very polite here, calling it falsehoods – falsehoods, you know, on any given day. He’s out there saying stuff that just ain’t true. Have you ever seen anything like that?

PENCE: Never in my lifetime. I said today that there has never been a time in my life where a president was more disconnected from the American people than we see today.

“With the Justice Department and Jan. 6 committee taking a close look at Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, he and his cronies could certainly use a fall guy, and it looks like they’ve found their patsy: right-wing lawyer John Eastman,” Rolling Stone reports.

“Eastman worked for Trump as the attorney devised legal strategies to overturn the election to keep the outgoing president in power. But, in recent weeks, Trump has confided to those close to him that he sees no reason to publicly defend Eastman.”

“The ex-president is also deeply annoyed with Eastman and all the negative ‘attention’ and media coverage that the lawyer’s work has brought Trump and his inner sanctum, including during the ongoing Jan. 6 hearings on Capitol Hill.”

Entirely predictable, but Trump better hope Eastman doesn’t flip.