The January 6 panel said Trump incited an
‘attempted coup’. Will it kill him or make him stronger?
Liz Cheney said to Trump’s defenders: ‘there will come
a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonour will remain.’
If Merrick Garland acts on revelations and decides to
prosecute, Trump will play the victim of a deep state conspiracy
David Smith
David Smith
in Washington
@smithinamerica
Sat 11 Jun
2022 07.00 BST
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jun/11/jan-6-hearings-capitol-attack-trump-coup-analysis
Donald
Trump achieved another first in US presidential history on Thursday night. He
was, in front of millions of people, accused by a congressional panel of
attempting to overthrow the US government.
“January
6th was the culmination of an attempted coup,” said Bennie Thompson, chair of
the House of Representative’s select committee investigating the insurrection
at the US Capitol. “President Trump summoned the mob, assembled the mob and lit
the flame of this attack,” added his vice-chair, Liz Cheney.
The
political and legal implications could be devastating, just as the Watergate
hearings were for President Richard Nixon half a century ago. But today
America, and its media, are bitterly divided, and Trump, who once boasted that
he could shoot someone and not lose voters, has repeatedly shown that what does
not kill him makes him stronger.
The former
president wrote defiantly on his Truth Social platform: “So the Unselect
Committee of political HACKS refuses to play any of the many positive witnesses
and statements, refuses to talk of the Election Fraud and Irregularities that
took place on a massive scale. Our Country is in such trouble!”
Like a
criminal trial, the first January 6 hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington
clinically outlined the case that will be made against Trump with the help of
vivid eyewitness testimony and breathtaking video footage. Although many of the
details had previously emerged in media reports, it was nevertheless compelling
to hear them woven together in an august setting on primetime television.
Cheney
argued that Trump oversaw and coordinated a sophisticated seven-part plan to
overturn the 2020 presidential election and block the transfer of power. He
encouraged the insurrection, refused to call off the mob and was content for
his own vice-president, Mike Pence, to be assassinated for refusing to overturn
the election.
“And, aware
of the rioters’ chants to ‘hang Mike Pence’, the president responded with this
sentiment: ‘Maybe our supporters have the right idea.’ Mike Pence ‘deserves’
it.”
The words
of Trump’s inner circle, including Pence, were turned against him. There was a
clip of former attorney general William Barr saying that Trump’s claims of a
stolen election were unfounded “bullshit”, then one of Trump’s daughter and
senior adviser Ivanka telling the committee: “I respected attorney general
Barr. I accepted what he was saying.”
The sense
of family betrayal presumably enraged Trump. It also demonstrated that trusted
aides were advising him that he had lost the election fair and square. This
could be used to build a criminal case that he pushed the Big Lie of voter
fraud knowing it to be just that – meaning that he made a deliberate effort to
subvert democracy.
The January
6 committee, however, has no power to prosecute Trump or anyone else. That
would be a decision for Merrick Garland, the attorney general, at the justice
department, and fraught with risks in a polarised environment: Trump allies
would doubtless cry foul and accuse him of a politically motivated witch-hunt.
Such a
prospect might actually make it more likely that Trump run for president again
in 2024 because he knows the justice department would be reluctant to go after
an active candidate. He would seek to weaponise such a move while on the
campaign trail, casting himself as the victim of a deep state conspiracy, just
as he did with the Russia investigation.
If Trump
does run, could he win again despite the mountain of damning evidence that now
stands in the public record? No one is writing him off just yet. He remains the
dominant force in the Republican party, where many continue to push his big
lie, a point underlined by its leadership’s protests that the hearings are an
illegitimate, partisan show trial aimed at deflecting attention from Joe
Biden’s crises such as inflation and crime.
It is true
that there are two Republicans on the January 6 committee, but both are
outliers who have been censured by the party. Adam Kinzinger is not seeking
re-elecction and Cheney knows her work could well cost her her seat in Wyoming,
where a Trump-backed primary challenger is polling strongly against her.
Fox News’
primetime host Tucker Carlson claimed the attack on the Capitol was ‘a
forgettably minor outbreak’.
Cheney said
on Thursday: “I say this to my Republican colleagues who are defending the
indefensible: there will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your
dishonour will remain.”
Meanwhile
Fox News, which has long had a marriage of convenience with Trump, did not even
broadcast the hearing live. Instead host Tucker Carlson described it as
“propaganda” from the “ruling class” and told viewers: “They are lying and we
are not going to help them do it.”
It is
possible that this and subsequent hearings will break through with a sliver of
undecided voters in the middle who had not been paying attention to the drip
feed of January 6 stories. But not even Democrats expect it to rescue them in
November’s midterm elections. History will remember Trump’s plot against
America – but memory alone cannot guarantee democracy.
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