JAN. 6 PANEL HAS NARROW OPENING
WASHINGTON — The task before the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol this week is to demonstrate that day’s viciousness was not some spontaneous outbreak of mayhem but an organized, radical and dangerous assault on democracy itself.
And members of the committee must make clear that Donald Trump intentionally and criminally orchestrated these events to hold on to power in defiance of the will of American voters.
When the committee holds the first in a series of public hearings in prime time on Thursday, its members will be fighting uphill against the short attention span of our political and media system. They will also be battling a concerted campaign of distraction by Trump’s supporters and the vast majority of Republican politicians — no matter their real view of Trump — who want to make the threat to our democracy disappear as a public issue.
The particularly chaotic flow of news lately is not in the committee’s favor. The mass killings made possible by our disgracefully weak gun laws, the cost of gas and groceries, Russia’s ongoing assault on Ukraine, and the overreach of an out-of-control Supreme Court majority all vie for public concern.
Yet our ability to deal with all these issues and many others rests on safeguarding a democratic system in which politicians who lose elections cede office and do not resort to violence to impede the popular will.
Trump urged a crowd to assail the legal process that would make Joe Biden president, and pressured Vice President Mike Pence to take illegal steps to block Biden electors — fortunately, unsuccessfully — while threatening Pence with the violence of the thugs who assailed police officers and ripped our seat of government apart. At the same time, Trump plotted to have Republican legislatures set aside the electors the voters had chosen and replace them with pro-Trump slates.
It was a coup attempt, plain and simple.
The committee’s task is to use its precious prime-time slot Thursday to bring home Trump’s lawlessness to the American people. In a compelling way — yes, they need to hold their audience — they must pile the evidence high enough to make Trump’s indictment and prosecution inevitable. We cannot thrive as a free society if public authorities refuse to bring to justice a man who sought to use the power of the presidency and a savage mob to destroy our democratic republic.
To achieve its goals, the committee needs to resist several temptations.
It’s true we need to change the outdated and easy-to-abuse statutes that govern the counting of electoral votes enacted in 1845 and 1887. Committee members should certainly make recommendations for change, but they cannot allow these public hearings to stray from the central issue: In all the years those laws were in force, only one selfish, immoral and power-hungry politician sought to exploit their imperfections to upend democracy. The focus must stay on Trump.
It’s almost part of the job description that politicians call attention to themselves. I get it. It’s how they win elections. But this is no ordinary hearing. The committee must be disciplined in sticking with its plan to work collectively. Nothing personal should get in the way of laying out the high crimes that were committed — and underscoring the peril our democracy still faces. Grandstanding is for another day.
Lies about the 2020 election are an animating force for an entire faction of the GOP and have been mobilized as a pretext for corrupting the electoral system to smooth the way for a more successful assault on majority rule in the next presidential election. Even in the face of all our other challenges, protecting democracy is our nation’s most important task. The Jan. 6 committee has a narrow but priceless opening to sound the call to battle.