The Congressional Capitol Insurrection Investigation Doesn’t Need Cheerleaders
On January 6, 2021 a defeated but not yet unseated President of the United States metaphorically shot the America most of us were taught to believe in atop the hill between Independence and Constitution Avenues. (The victim, alas, is still on life support.)
If history is any predictor, investigations into the January 6th insurrection will end as every other conflict with state power has for Trump: the notion that he did wrong will survive --perhaps even enhancing his legacy-- but the consequences will only be felt by those minions sacrificed for the greater cause.
We’ve already started to see what will become an enormous amount of evidence surrounding the crime. Evidence doesn’t mean squat when it comes to people who see themselves as above the law.
We know there was a plan. In fact, there were several plans.
The stage for the campaign to challenge the election results was set starting in February, 2020 with an announcement from the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee that they would spend $10 million on voting-related lawsuits— a figure that later doubled to $20 million. The prospect of voter fraud was raised in lawsuits filed in more than a dozen states and amplified by candidate Trump in the media.
Lawyer John Eastman, the man behind the op-ed holding Kamala Harris ineligible for the presidency by virtue of not being an American citizen, produced a two page memo at the request of the White House outlining how certification of the 2020 election results could be halted. Hours before the assault on the US Capitol building began, he spoke alongside Trump's attorney Rudy Giuliani at the "Save America" rally, asserting that balloting machines contained "secret folders" that altered voting results.
Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats issued a report on Thursday finding that Trump tried a no less than nine times to get his Justice Department to undermine the election.There was, according to this account, an extraordinary three-hour meeting in the Oval Office in which Trump argued for installing loyalist Jeffrey Clark.
https://twitter.com/JudiciaryDems/status/1446190516408922116?s=20
On January 5, a meeting at the Trump Hotel included militant-minded insiders like Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville, Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr.; Adam Piper, the director of the Republican Attorneys General Association; Peter Navarro, assistant to the president; Michael Flynn, the confessed felon and former national security advisor Trump recently pardoned; and Corey Lewendowski, Trump’s former campaign manager.
I’d hardly call the meeting a secret; many attendees blabbed about hobnobbing on social media. Still, it is among a number of events prior to January 6, attributed to planning and executing that day’s events.
There is evidence suggesting advance planning of the actual breach of the capitol building, namely the ease of which insurrectionists found windows not upgraded to include bomb-resistant glass.
Via the Los Angeles Times:
The four unreinforced windows and doors that were the first points of entry on Jan. 6 are all in a recessed alcove, shielded by exterior walls on three sides. They were not the first windows, nor the easiest to reach for rioters storming up the Capitol steps. Attackers ran more than 100 feet across a courtyard to reach the covered outdoor entryway, where two unreinforced windows and one of the doors are.
Questions about whether right-wing legislators gave private tours of the building prior to January 6 have been raised, but not proven.
What has been proven is the involvement of members of Congress with people who claim to have helped plan the events of Jan. 6.In a since deleted video, “Stop the [Election] Steal” organizer Ali Alexander claimed he worked with Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Arizona, Rep. Mo Brooks, R-Alabama, and Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Arizona, on plans to disrupt the Electoral College certification in Congress:
I was the person who came up with the January 6th idea with Congressman Gosar, Congressman Mo Brooks, and then Congressman Andy Biggs. We four schemed up putting maximum pressure on Congress while they were voting so that … we could change the hearts and the minds of Republicans who were in that body, hearing our loud war from outside.
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Yesterday was the deadline for four former Trump administration officials — Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff; Dan Scavino Jr., a deputy chief of staff; Stephen K. Bannon, an adviser; and Kash Patel, a Pentagon chief of staff — to respond to subpoenas from the special congressional committee investigating the Capitol riot.
Scavino, who started out in the Trump organization as a golf caddy, has been playing a game of cat and mouse with investigators seeking to serve him with papers. In a move that may foreshadow law enforcement resistance to cooperating with congress, on Thursday Scavino, accompanied by Eric Trump appeared at a funeral for Dutchess County Sheriff Butch Anderson .struggled to locate Scavino for over a week to serve him a subpoena.
Trump and his legal team, led by the ex-Trump campaign lawyer Justin Clark and former deputy White House counsel Patrick Philbin, have instructed attorneys for the subpoenaed aides to defy the orders.
Subpoenas have also been issued for the architect of the “Stop the Steal” rally Ali Alexander; the corporation behind the rally, Stop the Steal LLC; and Nathan Martin, who was connected to permit applications for the rally.
The name of the game for Team Trump at this juncture is to delay investigations past the 2022 midterm elections, not because they think their leader is jeopardy, but because they want to control the narrative about what happened on January 6th, irrespective of the facts. Here’s an explainer about how all the talk about criminal contempt charges is just that: talk.
This approach dates back to the days when fixer Roy Cohn represented Trump, starting with derailing a 1974 Justice Department effort to prove housing discrimination. The evidence was solid, the witnesses, unimpeachable. Yet the effort ended with a whimper, as Trump filed countersuits, raised phony charges, and admitted no wrongs.
Since the day Donald J. Trump announced he was running for President of the United States, a cottage industry of conspiracy investigators has embraced the notion that jail was just around the corner and inevitable for the man.
In some ways this is the left’s answer to the right’s fantastical assertions dating back to the earliest days of John Birch Society about a fifth column ready to seize power in the service of Soviet (now Chinese) overlords.
There will be more evidence in the coming weeks, and some of the clown crew surrounding the former president will inevitably fall by the wayside. It’s going to (sometimes) be exciting and dramatic. But don’t get your hopes up about Donnie Two Scoops going to the slammer.
Just as Trump’s allies play the long game, so must his opponents. The successes occurring in the run up to the 2020 election occurred when progressive and union organizers opted not to engage with voter fraud claims, and instead focused on voter turnout.
The events of January 6 are already being portrayed in ways not connected with realities of the day. The 625 or so individuals making their way through the court system are better candidates for being marked with the stains of the criminality of the Capitol assault. A quick look at some of the organizers of the anti-mask/reopen/vaxxer media events will show an overlap, one that needs to be publicized.
The things important with the January 6 investigation are public humiliation of Trump’s enablers and motivating voters to turn out in large enough numbers in 2022 to stop the country from returning to the path toward authoritarianism.
Democracy doesn’t come cheap, and there are no superheroes waiting to swoop in and save the day. There’s just us little people, the ones who believe in things like due process and the need for collective action to solve systemic problems. Figure out your niche and go for it.
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