Devastating testimony, all from Republicans, will have given Attorney General Merrick Garland food for thought.
After more than a year of interviewing more than 1,000 witnesses and reviewing piles of thousands of documents, the commission of inquiry into the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol chose an undeniable message for its last public hearing: Donald Trump is solely to blame for the attack.
Since its first hearing in June, the committee’s paintings have been addressed to two audiences. One of them was the general American public. Tactfully, on video, the committee told a disciplined and transparent story of what happened on Jan. 6 and the days leading up to stunning words from Trump’s closest aides.
But the committee’s public coda on Thursday gave the impression of being more aimed at its audience of the moment: an audience of one, U. S. Attorney General Merrick Garland.
Garland will finally bring charges for thieves opposed to Trump on Jan. 6, and the committee’s work, which paralleled the Justice Department’s investigation, has publicly advocated for establishing charges, seeking public help to do so.
Working chronologically from the months leading up to Election Day until Jan. 6, the nine panel members on Thursday presented hints of what a thieves case might look like opposing the former U. S. president. U. S.
Pointing to volumes of evidence, they explained how Trump won months before Election Day, regardless of the actual outcome. When his closest aides informed him that he had lost, Trump deliberately decided not to budge. it was a risk of violence at the U. S. Capitol. In the U. S. on Jan. 6, Trump encouraged it anyway.
“None of this would have happened without him. He cared personally and substantially about all of this,” Liz Cheney, the Republican representative who serves as the panel’s vice chair, said in her opening remarks.
Thursday’s hearing continued much of the strategy effectively implemented at previous hearings. He had many video statements and there were dramatic revelations. There were startling new behind-the-scenes footage of Nancy Pelosi and the most sensible congressional leaders pleading for security assistance. on January 6.
The panel also presented new evidence received from the Secret Service indicating that the White House warned of the possibility of violence on January 6. And there was a dramatic last-minute twist when the committee voted 9-0 to subpoena Trump.
And as in previous hearings, nearly all of the testimony the committee presented Thursday came from Republicans who were part of Trump’s inner circle.
There was a video of Bill Stepien, the manager of Trump’s crusade, advising the president to oppose pointing to victory in the vote count.
There’s Greg Jacobs, one of Mike Pence’s most sensible advisers, who said he knew Trump might turn against the vice president on Jan. 6.
And there’s a more devastating video of Cassidy Hutchinson, a very sensible aide to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, who told the committee how Trump became furious after the Supreme Court rejected his request to cancel the election.
“‘I don’t want other people to know we lost, Mark. Es shameful. We want to realize that. I don’t want other people to know we lost,” Trump said in Meadows after the Supreme Court ruled against him, Hutchinson. Said.
This type of testimony is the committee’s ultimate life legacy.
By having the most sensible Republicans and Trump’s inner circle publicly describe the comments and conversations in the run-up to Jan. 6, the committee dismissed attacks that its work is a partisan exercise. He created a dossier of some of the toughest Republicans in the U. S. government. The U. S. government tells Trump that what he is doing is illegal. And the committee pushes Trump away slowly and meticulously, building his guilt, showing how he intentionally chose to forget what those around him were telling him.
“When you look back at what came out of the work of this committee, the ultimate fact is that all of this evidence comes almost entirely from Republicans,” Bennie Thompson, chairman of the committee and Democrat from Mississippi, said in his opening remarks.
This nonpartisan framing is a great gift to Garland and his Justice Department as he investigates and weighs the charges. This builds the case opposite of Trump as an apolitical, law-motivated case. And while Trump and other Republicans are likely to claim that any accusation is a political witch hunt, the voluminous testimony of the most sensible Republicans will undermine that defense.
The committee will most likely release a final report later this year and make the decision to refer Trump and others to the Justice Department for prosecution as imaginable criminals.
But regardless of his actions, the lie Trump fabricated after the 2020 election has taken root across America. The 147 Republicans in the House who tried to overturn the effects of the election suffered little consequence. Denying the effects of the 2020 election has orthodoxy within the Republican Party. Candidates spreading baseless conspiracy theories about voting machines and elections are now poised to win state election oversight positions in Pennsylvania, Nevada, Arizona and Michigan, all states on the presidential battlefield.
These developments have made the Committee’s work even more urgent.
“Our establishments are only maintained in combination when men and women of intelligent religion maintain them in combination, regardless of the political cost. We have no guarantee that those men and women will be in office next time. Trump did it in 2020, now he’s learned not to install other people who might get in the way,” said Cheney, who lost the number one spot this year because of his opposition to Trump.
“With any and all efforts to excuse or justify the former president’s conduct, we are undermining the foundations of our republic. Indefensible conduct is prohibited, indefensible conduct is excused. Without accountability, each and every one becomes general and will take place again,” she added.