America must not forget Jan. 6
For many Americans, Jan. 6, 2021, remains that moment when a nation teetered on the brink — when the foundation of this once strong democracy began to crack. It wasn’t just the nation’s Capitol that came under siege that day, it was the national psyche. Gone is the cocky optimism born of two centuries of a peaceful transition of presidential power. It can happen here, we learned that day. This was not a simple riot in the streets of Washington, D.C. This was indeed an insurrection — one eventually put down by those who swore allegiance not to a man but to the Constitution; people who showed both physical and moral courage at a moment when the times demanded it.
Sadly on the eve of the third anniversary of that nightmarish day, the nation remains sorely divided over its meaning and its origins. This singular event has become a litmus test on the future of Donald Trump — his multiple indictments and his blithe comments on dictatorship notwithstanding — and ultimately on the future of this great experiment we call democracy.
“The central cause of January 6th was one man, former President Donald Trump, whom many others followed. None of the events of January 6th would have happened without him,” the House Select Committee on Jan. 6 found in its final report.
The committee found overwhelming evidence of “what ultimately became a multi-part plan to overturn the 2020 presidential election.”
In its latest public report on the aftermath of the Jan. 6-related prosecutions, the Justice Department told the story in stark terms: More than 1,237 defendants have been charged in connection with the insurrection. They hail from nearly all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Those who have reason to doubt the brutality of the attack have only to look at some of those numbers — 444 people were charged with assaulting, resisting, or impeding officers or Capitol employees; 120 individuals were also charged with using a deadly or dangerous weapon.
Some 140 police officers were assaulted on Jan. 6 at the Capitol — 80 from the Capitol Police and 60 from the Metropolitan Police. The deaths of at least nine people have been attributed to the attack, including those of five police officers who served at the Capitol on that day. More than 327 defendants have been charged with “corruptly obstructing, influencing, or impeding an official proceeding” — namely the certification of the 2020 election on the floor of the Senate, then being presided over by Vice President Mike Pence.
Among them is Garret A. Miller of Dallas County, Texas, who, according to the FBI report on his activities, wrote on his Facebook page, “Some crazy shit going to happen this week. Dollar might collapse … civil war could start … not sure what to do in DC.” He also wrote he was bringing “a grappling hook and rope and a level 3 vest. Helmets mouth guard and bump cap,” adding that the last time he came to D.C. for a pro-Trump rally he “had a lot of guns” with him. He also threatened to assassinate Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, according to the indictment.
Or as Stephen Ayres of Warren, Ohio, testified to the Jan. 6 committee, “The President [was] calling on us to come” to Washington, D.C. Ayres also posted on Facebook that “Civil War will ensue” if former president Donald Trump did not stay in power after Jan. 6. He pleaded guilty to charges of obstructing an official proceeding. So Jan. 6 was all too real and all too raw.
Today Trump too faces federal criminal charges of conspiring to defraud the United States and disenfranchise voters, and attempting to obstruct an official proceeding — not unlike the unruly mob he helped unleash on the Capitol that day. He watched that mob on TV for hours as it ransacked the Capitol before consenting to issue a statement urging them to “go home” — a statement in which he also called them “very special” people. In announcing Trump’s indictment last summer, special counsel Jack Smith said, “The attack on our nation’s capital on January 6, 2021, was an unprecedented assault on the seat of American democracy.” And, he added, “It was fueled by lies. Lies by the defendant targeted at obstructing a bedrock function of the U.S. government, the nation’s process of collecting, counting, and certifying the results of the presidential election.”
For many who watched the drama unfold in real time, and for most of those who were on scene — lawmakers escorted to safe rooms, staffers barricaded in offices — there is no ambiguity about what happened that day or about who was responsible for unleashing the fury. But a poll released earlier this week by The Washington Post and the University of Maryland shows a deep divide, with a third of those polled believing President Biden’s election victory was not legitimate. Republicans were less likely to believe the Jan. 6 participants were “mostly violent” than they were in a similar poll in 2021.
Yes, memories fade sometimes, especially those of loyalists now being fed daily doses of lies by Trump and his cable news and social media enablers.
But that doesn’t change the reality — a reality well documented by Smith, by the Jan. 6 committee, and by the handful of Republican truth-tellers who came to see that moment for the true danger it represented to the Republic. People like Cassidy Hutchinson, aide to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, who testified about Trump demanding that metal detectors be removed at his Jan. 6 rally on the Ellipse, saying, “They’re not here to hurt me. Let them in. Let my people in. They can march [to] the Capitol after the rally’s over. They can march from the Ellipse.”
It was damning testimony. It was a stark reminder that the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys and hundreds of others were there to do what Trump wanted them to do — prevent the peaceful transition of power. It’s a day this nation must never forget.