Hearings are too important to ignore
Testimony about the Jan. 6 attack offers a chilling look at facts, duty and neglect, courage and cowardice.
Capitol Police Officer Caroline Edwards’ voice quivered as she sought to convey just how frightening the violent anarchy she witnessed 18 months ago really was.
“There were officers on the ground. They were bleeding. They were throwing up,” she testified Thursday during a prime-time hearing of the House select committee on the Jan. 6 attacks. “I saw friends with blood all over their faces. I was slipping in people’s blood. I was catching people as they fell. It was carnage. It was chaos.”
Meanwhile, as she and her fellow officers, including reinforcements from Washington, D.C., police, confronted hundreds of violent rioters intent on keeping Congress from certifying the 2020 election results, the president of the United States watched the bedlam unfold on television from a dining room outside the Oval Office. Testimony gathered by the committee, much of it previewed for the first time Thursday, shows that President Trump angrily rebuffed increasingly frantic pleas from family members, advisers and legislators to call off the seditious mob.
Instead of ordering the military to send troops, or consulting with the Justice Department or Homeland Security about other help, Trump spent hours watching TV coverage of the attack. Like Nero fiddling while Rome burned, Trump openly mused about the rioters’ chants to hang Vice President Mike Pence, who had rebuffed Trump’s pressure from earlier that same day to intervene illegally in the election, basking in what in hindsight now appears indisputably part of a monthslong attempt to overturn a fairly decided election.
Edwards’ gripping account, and Trump’s callous and calculating behavior that day, offered a chilling juxtaposition between duty and neglect, between courage and cowardice. Her testimony was a key part of the first of six hearings aimed at showing exactly how Trump sought to remain in power after losing to Joe Biden. U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the ranking Republican on the panel, promised to unmask each element of a seven-part strategy by Trump and his close cohort of unscrupulous advisers to subvert the election, marking the first time in the history of our republic a president has refused to relinquish power peacefully. The hearings continue this week, on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday.
Nearly 19 million Americans tuned in Thursday, but many millions of others tuned it out. We write now to those who missed it, either because they were busy Thursday night or because they believed, as some voices still blindly loyal to Trump have suggested, that the committee is biased in its targeting of Trump. We implore you to watch the evidence yourself, including the video footage of the mob planning the attack and carrying it out. See the text messages from Trump supporters — from House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy to Fox News’ Sean Hannity — pleading with the president or his aides to stop the violence and accept the results of the election.
Americans of all political stripes have much to be concerned about these days. The pain of inflation, soaring gas prices, and a stubborn global pandemic are only the beginning of a litany of other priorities for all of us. But the brutal images we saw Thursday — law enforcement officers bloodied and beaten with broken poles that once held the American flag, a gallows erected to hang the vice president — should remind us all how close we were to the end of our peaceful democracy.
Preservation of that democracy, of our shared commitment to this nation and to the rule of law, ought to be everyone’s top priority. Don’t do as Tucker Carlson would have you do — and shut out the findings of the committee without even hearing them. Dig in, and then make your own conclusion. We trust you’ll be as concerned — and angry — as we were after watching the first hearing.
The hearing included a haunting 11-minute video of the attack, with new vantage points showing police officers being overwhelmed by hundreds of Trump supporters, led by far-right militia groups the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers. Some of the insurrectionists were captured on camera professing their willingness to die for the cause of keeping Trump in office. Many would later tell investigators they felt welcomed and even called by Trump — “We were invited by the president of the United States,” one of the rioters shouted on camera. Many others insisted that they came only because Trump had summoned them.
Watching the hearings made clear that even as Trump and his closest confidantes pushed for months the false claim that he had won the election, one after another of his inner circle urged him to admit the truth that he had lost. His hand-picked attorney general. The White House counsel and his team. His own daughter, Ivanka Trump. And many more — and yet, Trump and his legal team, led by the once-respectable Rudy Giuliani and abetted by enablers in Congress such as Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, continued to push a misinformation campaign that has seeped into the consciousness of his supporters, convincing many to this day that he is the true president.
In a video excerpt presented Thursday, Attorney General Bill Barr described his futile attempt to reason with Trump before resigning in 2020.
“I repeatedly told the president in no uncertain terms that I did not see evidence of fraud, you know, that would have affected the outcome of the election,” Barr said. “And frankly, a year and a half later, I haven’t seen anything to change my mind on that.”
That was enough to convince Ivanka Trump, a close adviser to her father.
“It affected my perspective,” Ivanka told the committee. “I respect Attorney General Barr, so I accepted what he was saying.”
If Trump couldn’t persuade his own daughter; or his attorney general; or the White House counsel; or scores of state and federal judges who threw out more than 60 frivolous election fraud claims; then ask yourselves: What reason is there left to give his claims credence? We believe the answer is none. Among other things to be revealed in the weeks ahead are details about a late-night meeting several weeks before the Capitol riots between Trump, retired Gen. Michael Flynn, Giuliani and others. Discussed at this meeting were the contours of a military coup, with suggestions that voting machines be seized and voting in some states be done over. White House lawyers and staff, learning of the secret meeting, rushed in to break it up. About an hour later, Trump sent his fateful tweet publicly urging supporters to come to Washington on the day Congress was to certify the Electoral College results.
“Be there, will be wild!” Trump tweeted.
That proved to be one of the truest things he ever said as president.
These hearings are too important to skip. Tune in. Make up your own minds.
The strength of our democracy itself may hang in the balance.