Jan. 6 hearings reveal appalling attack on American democracy
Supporters of former president Donald Trump seek to dismiss the U.S. House Select Committee investigation of the January 6, 2021 violent attack on the United States Capitol.
Conservative critics call the congressional hearings a ‘witch hunt.”
But the stunning testimonies, especially a riveting recount last week by Cassidy Hutchinson, an aide to Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff, provides clear evidence that the country was led by an unhinged leader so desperate to stay in power that he attempted to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Hutchinson recounted a story she said she was told by Trump’s security detail. As the attack on the Capitol began, Hutchinson said Trump grabbed at the wheel of the presidential vehicle after being told he couldn’t join the mob at the Capitol and lunged at the throat of his own Secret Service agent.
Secret Service officials have denied that Trump assaulted an agent or reached for the wheel but did not deny that he wanted to go to the Capitol.
Hutchinson’s testimony was damning because it details the extent in which Trump and his supporters attempted to overturn the result of the election.
Hutchinson provides an insider’s account of what was happening in the White House while Trump supporters engaged in a violent assault on Congress as it counted electoral votes.
Hutchinson said Trump knew the Jan. 6 rally could turn violent. She said he knew his supporters were armed but demanded that metal detectors be removed as armed protesters descended upon the Capitol.
As his supporters rioted and chanted “Hang Mike Pence,” Trump said that his vice president, who had refused to bend under pressure to illegally throw out electoral ballots deserved to be targeted, according to what Hutchinson said she heard from people who were present when Trump made the comment.
Hutchinson was appalled by the president and the rioters’ behavior as she watched in her words, “the Capitol building get defaced over a lie.”
The repeated lies of a stolen election threatened election workers.
Wandrea Moss, a former Georgia election worker testified about herself and her mother, Ruby Freeman, being targets of racism from Trump supporters who believed they rigged the 2020 election
The nine-member U.S. House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack, comprising seven Democrats and two Republicans, has done an impressive and essential public service for the past year in investigating the connection between Trump and his allies and the violence that ensued on the Capitol.
The hearings show Trump and his supporters justified violence in an attempt to overturn a democratic election.
When asked on video if the Jan. 6 violence was justified, Michael T. Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser, took the Fifth.
When demanding that magnetic detectors be removed to allow armed supporters into his Jan. 6 rally, Trump reportedly said, “They’re not here to hurt me.’
The public hearing is having an impact, which is why Trump supporters and election deniers are desperately seeking to assassinate the character of Hutchinson and other key witnesses.
A new poll shows that about half of Americans believe Trump should be charged with a crime for his role in the U.S. Capitol attack.
The survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds that 48% of U.S. adults say the Republican former president should be charged with a crime for his role, while 31% say he should not be charged. An additional 20% say they don’t know enough to have an opinion. Fifty-eight percent say Trump bears a great deal or quite a bit of responsibility for what happened on Jan. 6.
The poll was conducted after five public hearings by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack but it was taken before Tuesday’s surprise hearing featuring Hutchinson.
Hutchinson’s explosive testimony provided more evidence that Trump could be linked to a federal crime.
Still, Trump loyalists are unlikely to change their views and will continue to support him regardless of the evidence against him. They are engaged in willful ignorance because they believe it serves their self-interest. Trump amplifies their grievances and has given them what they have wanted for decades a conservative-majority Supreme Court moving swiftly to impose a conservative agenda.
But the evidence is clear.
Trump incited an armed mob to overturn a democratic election
If we are to be a nation governed by the rule of law and not the rule of man, Trump and those who sought to undermine American democracy must be held accountable.
Irv Randolph is the managing editor of the Philadelphia Tribune, the nation’s oldest continuously published African American newspaper in the nation and co-founder of The Randolph Report, a newsletter on politics, culture and career and professional news relevant to Black Americans.