The threat to democracy
We don’t know whether the Select Committee to Investigate the Jan. 6 Attack on the United States Capitol will deliver blockbuster revelations in its Thursday primetime hearing. We don’t know whether the ratings will impress (though we do know no one will watch on Fox News, which is tuning out the unquestionably newsworthy spectacle). But to view the proceedings through such a petty prism would be a monumental mistake — because with each passing week, it becomes clearer that the riot was but one chilling spasm in a broader, quieter, coordinated attempt to override the election and install Donald Trump as president for a second term.
This is not to understate that fateful day’s violence. Seven lives were taken as a mob whipped into a frenzy by Trump rioted to stop the rightfully elected Joe Biden from becoming president. Monday, the Proud Boys leader and four others linked to the group were charged with seditious conspiracy and other offenses, an indictment that comes four months after 11 members or associates of the Oath
Keepers militia were hit with similar charges. That brings to more than 800 charged with crimes for the Capitol breach.
But even if Jan. 6 had never happened, the sub rosa campaign to overturn the election — by deploying alternate slates of electors, weaponizing the Justice Department, filing garbage lawsuits full of falsehoods, enlisting the national security establishment, and more — would stand out as the scandal of the century.
In Georgia, where Trump pressured the Republican secretary of state to “find” him the exact number of votes he needed to win, a Dec. 13, 2020 email recently obtained by the Washington Post revealed the lengths to which a slate of fake pro-Trump electors tried to keep their nefarious plot secret.
All of it is a rehearsal for 2024, when, if he’s the GOP nominee, Trump and his minions, who are trying to place operatives as poll workers and readying incendiary lies about massive fraud, will insist he won, no matter the voters. Be afraid, and be on guard.