Jan 6 Report Says Trump Did It: So What?

“This is the time to be the best Americans we can be.” - Former Senator Gary Hart

I wasn’t going to write today, but feel obligated to add my two cents to the hubbub over the 800+ page report on the January 6th attempted coup published by the House Select Committee late on Thursday.

At the end of this piece you’ll find links to some of the better analyses I’ve seen. There will be more revelations and takes; after all, we’re talking about a big document with tons of footnotes and a gaggle of transcripts, some of which go beyond the 36 people invoking their Fifth Amendment rights.

The bottom line: all the threads of this investigation lead back to Trump.

From Brandi Buchman  at Daily Kos:

• Trump exploited an ordinary situation, sowed confusion about the timing of the votes, and deceived Americans, the report notes. And all of this was foreshadowed.

• Subchapters in the first section of the report focus on Trump’s early plans to declare victory in the election, further details about his efforts to delegitimize the process, the formal launch of the Big Lie, the shakeup to his campaign team after the election was over, how his campaign informed him repeatedly that he had lost and voter fraud didn’t exist as well as Trump’s promotion of conspiracy theories.

The bubble protecting MAGA-types from uncomfortable facts has thus far remained intact. Your angry uncle on Facebook thinks the only conspiracies worth investigating involve Hunter Biden’s laptop and the time machines the Democratic Party is using to convey marching orders from whatever dead communist leader scares him the most. 

Here’s Fox News, an entity that includes many people who should at a minimum be identified as unindicted co-conspirators.

• Legal experts say that the House January 6 Committee's criminal referrals of former President Donald Trump to the Justice Department for his involvement in the 2021 Capitol protests are "theater" and will likely be ignored by the DOJ, and they could possibly have a counterproductive effect should the DOJ decide to bring charges.

The House Committee’s report shows the work going into the nine hearings they held. As Rep. Jamie Raskin pointed out:

• “The report is half about the past and what we’ve just studied, and what needs to be done to protect ourselves against similar cycles of coup, insurrection, electoral sabotage and political violence,” the Maryland Democrat said, previewing the final document. “These are the forces that have now been unleashed.”

The Just Security Newsletter’s prioritizing of the report’s contents starts with the observation that racism was a prime motivator for events prior to and following the election, specifically among White Supremacist & Nationalist extremists.

• At the same time as making these racist throughlines more widely understood, the Report helpfully identifies rightwing anti-government extremism — with a focus on the Oath Keepers and the Three Percenters — as a related movement that explains the conditions that gave rise to the January 6th attack. It notes these closely related movements produced what might be thought of as a presage for the assault on the Capitol, as “[f]ar-right extremists protested at or inside State capitols, or at other government buildings, in at least 68 instances” between January 1, 2020 and January 20, 2021.

• We have always thought that white supremacy should be foregrounded in the analysis of the January 6th attack and the efforts to disenfranchise voters in the ways Trump and his associates chose to do. Policymakers, scholars, and the general public can benefit significantly from grappling with the evidence and analysis provided by the select committee.

I think if there’s one lesson to be learned from both the Obama and Trump presidencies it’s that hatred and fear of the “other” is a disease threatening the foundations of our political system. 

From CNN:

• It’s a narrative that expands upon the committee’s public hearings over the summer, walking readers step-by-step through the various schemes Trump orchestrated and the help he had from allies inside and outside his administration.

• Along the way, the committee showed more details about what it had learned in the 1,000-plus witnesses interviews conducted over the 18-month investigation, including tidbits it hadn’t released publicly previously, such as Trump lawyer Eric Herschmann’s call with Rudy Giuliani the morning of January 6, and that Trump and his inner circle targeted election officials at least 200 times.

The crowd, despite the denials by Trump’s supporters, was armed. Many of those who didn’t attend the president’s speech also brought offensive supplies.

• Secret Service security checkpoints screening people going into the rally on the Ellipse at which Donald Trump spoke turned up quite a lot: “269 knives or blades, 242 cannisters of pepper spray, 18 brass knuckles, 18 tasers, 6 pieces of body armor, 3 gas masks, 30 batons or blunt instruments, and 17 miscellaneous items like scissors, needles, or screwdrivers.” Those were the people who agreed to go through the magnetometers, and they still had hundreds of knives and hundreds of canisters of pepper spray.

The committee’s evidence is now in the hands of the Justice Department, and where things go in terms of charging for criminal acts is all wrapped up in the same sorts of political divisions plaguing the country. 

The answers to questions surrounding the future of democratic processes as historically practiced in the United States will play a role in what happens in the future. 

The president’s defenders are motivated by the fear of suggested soon-to-come extraordinary events that will in some way punish those who call themselves conservatives (or traditionalists or evangelicals). Deviation from policies putting the “rights” of individuals first over the “needs” of society/world are all part of a conspiracy to install socialism and repression of caucasians.

It makes no difference that predictions of doom and gloom are largely imaginary (see: war on Christmas), or a lack of truth (30,573 lies in four years) in the narratives surrounding these divinations; the fear of “taking something away” acts as blinders to the faithful.

It used to be that the right side of our political divide was all about tradition including following the nation’s laws and customs. Now legal and ethical violators are praised for their actions, no matter how heinous, based on the amount of outrage generated by their perceived opponents.

(I’m not saying Dems are innocent; but the GOP seems to think that corruption is a virtue.)

Although I personally hold that economic factors are foremost in considering both the past and the future, there is now a worldwide movement focused on blaming liberal democracy as the root of society’s problems. That’s why formerly patriotic political leaders are willing to parrot the pronouncements of Vladimir Putin.

I know not everything is black or white, but the general tendencies toward or away from authoritarianism dominate my analysis of contemporary conflicts.

The January 6th Committee held that Trump, et.al, should be banished from government and the processes of determining justice as a defense of constitutional processes.  

From Vox:

• In its recommendations, the committee says Trump and his allies should be permanently barred from holding government office under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which prohibits anyone who “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against” the United States from holding any “civil or military” office if they have previously taken a formal oath to support the US Constitution.

• In the words of the report, “the Committee believes that those who took an oath to protect and defend the Constitution and then, on January 6th, engaged in insurrection can appropriately be disqualified and barred from holding government office — whether federal or state, civilian or military.”

• It goes on to recommend that Congress pass legislation on this topic to establish specific procedures for formal disqualification.

Other recommendations included Congressional consideration of legislation to bolster its subpoena power and increase penalties against those who threaten election workers. Last, but not least, it said bar associations should consider whether any of the lawyers who aided Mr. Trump’s attempts to overturn the election should be punished.

Finally, here’s Gary Hart in the Bulwark:

• We are all conditioned to focus our attention on our rights, but our duties deserve equal consideration. This central point is the focus of the famous story about a concerned citizen outside the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia asking Benjamin Franklin what the Founders were creating in there: “A Republic,” Franklin replied, “if you can keep it.” He knew, as did most of the other Founders who were students of the ancient republics, that “keeping it” required citizen involvement, participation, and engagement. There were duties to perform. Only by performing our civic duties could we protect our rights.

• In 2020, we as Americans made a fateful decision to choose democracy over authoritarianism. We will have to make that decision again and again without deviation or hesitation until the danger of the America First authoritarians has passed. We will have to recommit ourselves to good citizenship, to striving to be exemplars of civic virtue for our fellow Americans.

• This is no time for laxity. This is the time to be the best Americans we can be.

Links:

Important Elements of the January 6th Report- Just Security

Donald Trump’s Reaction to the Jan 6 Final Report- Huffpost

The January 6 Committee Publishes Its Final Report on the Insurrection - Daily Kos

Jan 6 Committee: Key Findings- New York Times

January 6 Committee Report Takeaways- Vox

January 6 Committee Recommends Barring Trump from Office - National Review

Putting the January 6 Report in the Context of America’s Democratic Story - The Bulwark

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