In its last meeting on Monday, the House Select Committee on the January 6, 2021 Attack on the Capitol voted unanimously to refer four criminal charges against Donald Trump to the US Department of Justice (DOJ) for investigation. refer to). ,
This is the first time in the history of the United States that a former president has been formally charged with criminal actions. If prosecuted and convicted, Trump could face a lengthy prison sentence, as well as disqualification from ever holding public office again.
Trump on four counts of aiding and abetting an insurrection, obstruction of a federal proceeding (certification of election by Congress on January 6), conspiracy to defraud the federal government, and conspiracy to make false statements (falsely impersonating voters) making) is included. Fill in the statement that they were actually elected by their states).
In a particularly striking passage, the executive summary of the report accompanying the criminal remand exposes Trump’s plan to lead a crowd to the Capitol on January 6, only to be thwarted by protests from his Secret Service guards, who believed that permission was denied. It was too dangerous to let them leave the White House to join the armed mob:
[e]The president intended to personally participate in the January 6 effort on Capitol Hill to lead the effort to overturn the election, whether from inside the House of Representatives, from a podium outside the Capitol, or otherwise. .. There is no doubt, from all the evidence gathered, that this was President Trump’s intent.
The issuance of waivers is a demonstration that the US political crisis is indeed deepening, not abating. It comes despite contrary claims from the Biden White House and complacent media analysts after the midterm elections saw pro-Trump voters soundly defeated in several high-profile races.
Trump and his supporters in Congress and the Republican Party are facing criminal referrals and other actions requested by the select committee, including the referral of four Republican congressmen to the House Ethics Committee for refusing to comply with subpoenas to testify about the events of January 6. Condemned immediately.
A majority of Republicans, who take control of the House of Representatives on January 3, 2023, voted two years ago not to certify Biden’s victory. The leader of the House Republicans, Rep. Kevin McCarthy, has said that when the new session begins, he will launch a select committee investigation, not the insurgency.
Commission vice chair and Wyoming CEO Liz Cheney, Republican Liz Cheney, acknowledged the lingering explosive tension as the final session began, saying that her great-grandfather had fought in the Union Army in the Civil War to protect the structure. American Constitutional. This structure, he claimed, still existed because each US president had peacefully handed over power to a chosen successor: Donald Trump. The clear implication of his comments was that the United States was facing the threat of civil war.
Cheney himself left Congress after losing the Republican primary to a Trump supporter. Three other committee members either chose not to run again or were defeated, meaning only five of the nine members who voted for criminal exemptions on Monday will actually be in Congress two weeks from now.
The commission will dissolve itself after releasing its final report on Wednesday. The executive summary was released on Monday, and thousands of pages of statements are being made public, along with other evidence, as well as being handed over to the US Department of Justice, where a special prosecutor, Jack Smith, has been hired. . From investigation.
The criminal referral is not limited to Trump, but names several of his legal advisers as potential prosecution targets, as well as former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark. The referral also suggests that crimes other than the four listed were committed against Trump, but leaves it up to the DOJ to determine which individuals should be charged.
Smith was appointed a month ago by Attorney General Merrick Garland in an effort to insulate the Biden administration from political fallout from its decision to pursue or quash prosecution of Trump and other top aides. You do not need to act on criminal referrals to the Commission.
The focus of the final hour of the hearing and the 154-page executive summary was Trump’s personal role, precluding any examination of the social and political roots of the crisis that erupted in violence on January 6, or the performance of the US government. Institutions, especially military and intelligence agencies.
The executive summary states, “That evidence led to an overriding and direct conclusion: The central cause of January 6 was one man, former President Donald Trump, who was followed by many others.” “None of the January 6th events would have happened without him.”
There is no doubt that Trump was at the center, but he was not just the head of a fascist conspiracy. He was also the leader of the Republican Party and the commander-in-chief of a vast military intelligence system. The reality of what happened before and during the first attempt in history by an American president to undo his own defeat in a presidential election cannot be ignored.
But from the outset, the mission of the January 6th commission has been to whitewash the role of the capitalist state and the Republican Party, while focusing its attention on Trump as a person and his nongovernmental co-conspirators, lawyers and political operatives. . These, in turn, maintained Trump’s connections to fascist milieu that included armed groups such as the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers that participated in the violent attack on the Capitol.
This cover-up was the intention of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi when she created the House Select Committee, and was embraced by Liz Cheney, the daughter of Dick Cheney, a former vice president and undisputed war criminal. Both are strong supporters of military intelligence.
For this reason, the Select Committee never publicly explained why the Pentagon delayed sending the National Guard to guard the Capitol for 199 minutes while Congress and law enforcement officials dispersed violent mobs through the Capitol. as requested. Retired General William Walker, then head of the Washington National Guard, was never called as a public witness to discuss his repeated requests from the Pentagon to allow troops to be sent.
The commission also did not explore the reasons why the intelligence services and law enforcement did not prepare anything in advance, even though they had ample evidence of plans for a violent attack, including the occupation of the Capitol on January 6. Instead, the executive summary argues that they could not have foreseen the specific events of January 6, such as Trump’s sudden and allegedly ‘unscripted’ call for his supporters to march from the White House rally to the Capitol. ‘ call, and his promise to accompany them.
Another major institution that appears to be ‘off limits’ to the committee was the US Supreme Court. At least two judges were directly related to the coup leaders. Judge Clarence Thomas’s wife, Virginia ‘Ginny’ Thomas, is a longtime Republican activist who played a key role in promoting aspects of Trump’s electoral coup, including getting state lawmakers to overturn the electors elected by their state electors. efforts were included.
If Vice President Mike Pence does not comply with Trump’s orders to stop the process of refusing to accept electoral votes from key ‘battlefield’ states like Arizona and Pennsylvania, Judge Samuel Alito will rule on Congressional certification of electoral votes. Ready to stop. The far-right judge reserved a ruling to watch the mob attack, then let the motion lapse after Trump told his fascist supporters to go home.
The executive summary correctly states that Trump ‘believed then, and still believes, that he was above the law, not bound by our Constitution and its express checks on the authority of the President.’
It added: ‘If President Trump and the allies who aided him in attempting to overturn the legal outcome of the 2020 election are not ultimately held accountable under law, their behavior could become a precedent and guide future elections. may invite danger. Failure to be held accountable now could ultimately lead to more illegal attempts to subvert our elections, threatening the security and viability of our republic.’
But in the face of this threat of dictatorship, the Democrats and Republicans on the committee offer little more than the ‘bad guy’ theory. American democracy would flourish like a garden if Snake Trump hadn’t taken a break to delve into his Manhattan real estate scams and reality TV ventures.
The reality is that the threat of authoritarian rule grows organically from the crisis of American and global capitalism, in which a tiny minority of the super-wealthy increasingly challenge their domination of society from below.
The ruling elite acting through the Republican and Democratic parties, its two main political instruments, have launched wars abroad and repression at home: increasingly fierce conflicts with Russia and China, and the capitalist state’s offensive against the working class. At home, as in bipartisan action by Congress to outlaw the railroad workers’ strike.
The Biden administration, which has tried to distance itself from the committee’s actions, has embraced Trump’s GOP co-conspirators as its “allies” whose support is needed in pursuing the war abroad.
(Article originally published in English on December 20, 2022)
