Thread by @SethAbramson

Tuberville denies being at Trump International on January 5 despite a photo putting him there.

Flynn denies being at Trump International on January 5 despite a photo putting him there.

Bossie denies being at Trump International that day despite an eyewitness putting him there.

Daniel Beck refuses to answer questions about the events of January 5, after saying he was at Trump International for a meeting of top Trump advisors.

Charles Herbster has posted, edited, deleted, and reposted a FB post in which he admits being at Trump International that night.

So doesn't it seem like the events of January 5 at Trump International are among the most important events for investigators to discover more about in *the history of the FBI*, and yet we've had *nothing* on it though Trump's trial ends *tomorrow*?

What—I guess I'd say—the f*ck?

And how's *this* for a pretty big twist? We've *no idea* if Trump himself was at that meeting—especially as Herbster originally claimed the meeting was at the White House, then changed it. What we *do* know is that the meeting was about "finding ways to put pressure on Congress."

While I was in the midst of writing 15 articles on this, I got a letter from Flynn's lawyer saying he wasn't at Trump International despite the Alabama Political Reporter publishing a photo of him there on that day. Seems we're supposed to shut up about this until the trial ends?

I should add that the letter from Flynn's lawyer was very threatening—and clearly intended to get me to shut up about this subject immediately. To get such a letter from a key witness to post-election events within Trump's inner circle in the midst of Trump's trial is startling.

Now the trial will end tomorrow, with Trump's defense being that no one ever proved he or his inner circle had done any preparing for the events of January 6. I showed that they had done lots of planning, and for this I got threatened and attacked. And no one is paying attention.

One of the meeting attendees—who called into the meeting and spoke to the girlfriend of the president's son—is now calling for another violent insurrection and in hiding from the FBI. For writing about this, as I said, even though it all came from media reports, I'm threatened.

I'm a Harvard-educated lawyer who's a columnist for Newsweek and teaches journalism at a public flagship university. I've been in journalism 25 years, and been nominated for an international list of top journalists alongside Pulitzer Prize winners. Guess how I spent the last day?

You might think—based on all I just said—that I spent the last day being interviewed by Daniel Dale of CNN and Brian Stelter of CNN and Maggie Haberman of NYT. You'd be close. These people spent the last day trying to destroy my life and career. That's why this country is fucked.

The point here has nothing to do with me. It's that the story of the century, supported by hard evidence that's uncontroverted, remained unpursued by the media in the midst of the Trial of the Century. They spent their time—instead—trying to destroy the guy who *was* pursuing it.

That's not, ultimately, a problem for me. I will be fine. I have been through worse. No, the problem is for our media institutions and our rule of law and justice in America. A dangerous insurrectionist former president is going to escape justice in part because of this bullshit.

Imagine, instead of what I just described, a media ecosystem in which full-time corporate journalists work hand-in-hand with independent journalists and curatorial journalists to impress upon our leaders the need to wrestle with uncomfortable hard facts. Where would we be today?

Tonight I'll be recording a lecture on the definition of journalism for a large class of my students at a major public flagship university. I'll be doing so after days of being called a fraud. Part of me doesn't know what to say—as right now our system seems irretrievably broken.

Journalism is changing—it has new participants using new modes. There's a chance for these changes to be generative. I mean to participate in this generative change. But the pushback from Old Media is scary, aggressive, dishonest, borderline violent. It wants to *destroy* people.

I'm a journalism professor who also works as a journalist and has been doing journalism for 25 years and been recognized for my journalism. I'm also a lawyer who's been recognized for the quality of my legal expertise. Tonight—on the eve of verdict—I weep for my fucking country.

Here's my crappy, inadequate biography. Perhaps if I'd done more with my life—perhaps if I'd spent 10,000 *more* hours working in the public interest—something I did to try to help out would've been listened to rather than mercilessly razed and lied about. sethabramson.net/bio

If you want to read the articles I mentioned, you can find them—all are *free*—at the link below. sethabramson.substack.com

I apologize for the strong language. I'm upset about the verdict that seems certain to come tomorrow. It's an unjust verdict, but worse, it's a verdict that'll be issued without all the evidence having been received by the jurors and the nation, for reasons that are unforgivable.

It's a broken country when the denizens of Twitter have infinitely more information about the crime of the century than members of the Senate in large part because they were willing to read independent journalists who award-winning journalists are trying to discredit and destroy.