The January 6 panel makes it clear: American democracy needs accountability
Thursday’s House select committee was one like no other. Shortly after 1pm, Liz Cheney, the daughter of a vice-president and Republican grandees, warned that the US, as a constitutional republic, was in danger. Two-and-a-half hours later, seven Democrats and two Republicans unanimously voted to subpoena Donald Trump. In all likelihood, he will never appear. Regardless, history had again been made.
“Why would Americans assume that our constitution and institutions of our Republic are invulnerable to another attack?” Cheney pondered.
Trump yearned to be a modern-day Caesar. He knew that he had lost the election, yet he persevered.
White House staffer Alyssa Farah Griffin testified that a week after the election Trump blurted out, “Can you believe I lost to this effing guy?” After his defeat in the supreme court, a wrath-filled Trump remained unbowed.
Cassidy Hutchinson, a White House aide and a deputy to Mark Meadows, said that he was “just raging”. Trump seethed, futilely grasping for a way out.
“I don’t want people to know we lost, Mark,” he told Meadows, his chief of staff and Hutchinson’s boss. “This is embarrassing.”
“Trump had a premeditated plan to declare that the election was fraudulent and stolen before election day,” Cheney said. This is not stuff of democracies, but of banana republics and strongmen.
Right-wing stalwarts were there for Trump, offering aid and comfort along the way. “Let’s get right to the violence,” Roger Stone, the veteran Trump-hand, chuckled.
Steve Bannon briefed Chinese associates over Trump’s election denial strategy. “And what Trump is going to do is just declare victory, right?” Bannon semi-asked, semi-stated.
“He’s gonna declare victory, but that doesn’t mean he’s the winner, he’s just going to say he’s the winner.” Bannon later received a presidential pardon. He will be sentenced later this month for his contempt of Congress conviction and faces fraud charges in New York.
Peter Navarro, another White House official, concocted the infamous “Green Bay Sweep”. His trial for contempt of Congress kicks off shortly. It’s a rogues’ gallery.
Tom Fitton of the well-funded Judicial Watch helped script Trump’s defiance. In a 31 October 2020 email, he urged Trump to declare himself the winner. “We had an election today– – and I won,” Fitton’s email read. Fitton clamored for mass disenfranchisement too.
His memo called for Trump to demand that only votes “counted by the election day deadline” be tallied. This time it went way beyond stripping minorities of their vote – a traditional but unstated Judicial Watch goal. Now he was gunning for urban moms and dads too, the bedrock of the Republican party of yesteryear.
More broadly, the Republican party’s sedition wing has plenty of allies who wear suits and ties. Ginni Thomas and John Eastman, Justice Thomas’s wife and clerk, respectively, were definitely not alone. It’s not just about folks in camouflage.
The armed mob had embraced Trump, and he loved them back. “I don’t care that they effing had weapons,” he muttered on January 6, according to Hutchinson. If blood were to be spilled and the constitution shredded, so be it. It was about clinging to power without legal justification.
Documentary evidence presented by the committee revealed that some members of the Secret Service acted like modern-day praetorians, acting oblivious to threats posed by Trump’s supporters to the certification of the election.
“Their plan is to kill people,” one message read. “Please please take this tip seriously and investigate further.” Members of the Secret Service knew that a storm was brewing but turned a blind eye. Their loyalty ran to Trump the man, not the office he occupied.
“The vast weight of evidence presented so far has shown us that the central cause of January 6th was one man, Donald Trump,” Cheney made clear.
Amid the hearing, the supreme court rejected Trump’s efforts to tamp down on the justice department’s investigation of his mishandling of presidential documents and classified records. Mar-a-Lago now looks ever more like a prison of the ex-game show host’s making, a custom-built gilded cage complete with gold leaf and dining room. Or a set of The Apprentice.
After the 1787 constitutional convention, Benjamin Franklin observed that the US was a republic if we could “keep it”. Slavery and civil war tested us 160 years ago. Again, we are being tested. Midterms are less than a month away.
Lloyd Green is a regular freelance contributor and served in the Department of Justice from 1990 to 1992