The House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection, in six weeks of hearings, has set the table for the Department of Justice to proceed with criminal prosecution of Donald Trump and co-conspirators in their attempt to set aside election results and remain in power.
After a year of investigation, the committee has turned up evidence that Trump knew he lost the 2020 election, but went ahead with plans he had made before the election to claim the election was stolen by Democrats.
The committee has persisted, despite Republican claims that there was nothing to see there, the Republican National Committee’s declaration that the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol was “legitimate political discourse,” and claims the Democratic House had no authority to conduct the investigation.
The committee concluded its first series of public hearings July 21 with a review of the three hours and seven minutes on Jan. 6 when Trump refused to take action while his supporters rampaged through the Capitol.
Reps. Elaine Luria (D-Va.) and Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) narrated video footage, text messages, White House call logs and other records that showed Trump never reached out to any law enforcement or national security agencies during the assault, which he watched on Fox News.
On Jan. 6, after Trump had been tweeting about so-called “election fraud” from 1 a.m. to 11 a.m., he went to the Ellipse for a speech that started at noon. Ignoring advice from attorneys, intelligence advisers and the Department of Justice about telection results, he persisted in spreading the lie that the election was rigged and urged the crowd to “march down” to the Capitol and “fight like hell.”
By the time Trump finished his speech, about 1:10 p.m., Congress was convening for its joint session. Pence had issued a letter on Twitter rejecting calls to decertify the electoral count. Crowds already had gathered at the Capitol and breached a police barricade.
Trump’s security detail refused to take him to the Capitol, so he returned to the White House, where he called Republican senators he hoped would help him stop certification of electoral votes during the joint session. He also called Rudy Giuliani, his attorney who, after losing all attempts to get courts to set aside the vote, was leading the effort to promote “alternate electors.”
Trump watched the siege on TV from his private dining room. When Trump sent a tweet at 2:24 p,.m. attacking Pence for lacking “courage” to stop the count, a riot had already been declared by police and Pence had been escorted off the Senate floor and taken to a nearby office. Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund called the Pentagon for help, but was denied backup from D.C. National Guard troops.
As the Capitol filled with rioters, Secret Service agents protecting Pence feared it would be impossible to keep the vice president safe.
In radio traffic from the Secret Service, aired for the first time, agents could be heard anxiously planning their retreat.
“It was disturbing, I don’t like talking about it. But, there were calls to say goodbye to family members and so forth,” an unidentified White House security official testified in a recorded closed-door deposition.
“There were discussions of reinforcements coming, but it was just chaos,” the witness added.
At 4:17 p.m., Trump finally tweeted a video telling his supporters inside the Capitol to “go home.”
“I know your pain. I know your hurt,” he begins. “We love you. You’re very special. You’ve seen what happens. You’ve seen the way others are treated. ... I know how you feel, but go home, and go home in peace.”
The crowd began to disperse, but it still took nearly three hours to clear the Capitol. At 8:06 p.m., Pence reconvened the Senate to continue the certification of electoral votes, and Nancy Pelosi called the House back in session at 9 p.m., but Republican lawmakers still objected and the process dragged on until 3:42 a.m. Jan. 7.
The committee also played outtakes from a Jan. 7 video message, in which an angry Trump resists the text prepared for him by White House officials as his daughter Ivanka tries to coach him through reading it. At one point, Trump rejects the line, “this election is now over,” saying, “I don’t want to say ‘the election is over,’ I just want to say ‘Congress has certified the results.’”
Why does this matter? Aaron Rupar noted, “Because the rest of the hearing hammered home that throughout Jan. 6, just about everyone in Trump’s orbit (with the notable exception of Rudy Giuliani) urged him repeatedly to do something, anything, to call off violent insurrectionists who were clearly inspired by his lies about the election and calls for them to ‘fight.’ … more than 18 months later Trump is still actively trying to overturn his loss.”
In her closing statement July 21, committee vice chair Liz Cheney played audio of Steven Bannon from Oct. 31, 2020, four days before the election, in which Trump’s chief strategist explained the dynamics of the vote count, in which Republicans expected to lead in the votes cast in person on Election Day, while the votes cast by mail, which likely would favor Democrats, would be counted later. Trump was going to declare victory whether or not he was the winner.
So the Big Lie was conceived in October and born on Nov. 4, 2020, when Trump claimed in a 2:30 a.m. press conference that there was ongoing “fraud on the American public” and “Frankly, we did win this election.” That lie, repeated on the Ellipse Jan. 6, ignited the insurrection. He continues to push it, and his party backs him.
As the commission adjourned for its summer hiatus, promising to come back in September for at least one more public hearing, a national Marist Poll conducted for NPR and PBS NewsHour July 11-17 found 58% of registered voters who were sampled believed that Trump is to blame for “a great deal” or “a good amount” of what happened at the US Capitol on Jan. 6. That included 92% of Democrats, 57% of independents and 18% of Republicans, who largely remain in denial. The blame total remains relatively unchanged since a week after the attempted insurrection.
The Marist Poll also found 50% of registered voters think Trump should be charged with crimes, but only 29% of registered voters think he will be charged with crimes.
Attorney General Merrick Garland must give the nod for the Department of Justice to proceed with investigations leading to Trump’s indictment on potential felony charges — with the most likely charge engaging in a conspiracy to defraud the United States, by sending a violent mob to the Capitol to stop the certification of the election. Another possible charge is involuntary manslaughter for failing to take action to stop the mob for more than three hours after it attacked the Capitol, resulting in the deaths of several people and injuries to about 150 police officers.
There are signs Justice is picking up the pace. In the meantime, Trump is still rallying his supporters and urging them to fight for him. The insurrection is expanding into an insurgency as we head into the midterm election season, and some of his armed supporters are known to be looking forward to killing Democrats and starting a civil war. It’s time for Garland to do his job and put the Big Liar and his co-conspirators in jail. — JMC
From The Progressive Populist, August 15, 2022
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