The televised hearings of the House Jan. 6 Committee that begin next Thursday will have historical significance in the battle taking place in our country between democracy and autocracy.
The House Select Committee is investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol – the first since the War of 1812 – and the events that precipitated the attack, including the attempted coup by former President Donald Trump – the first presidential coup attempt in our nation’s 233-year history.
During its investigation, the Committee has conducted some 1,000 interviews and collected well over 100,000 documents.
This is the most important congressional investigation of presidential wrongdoing since the Senate investigation of the Watergate scandals in the 1970s.
At the same time, the Justice Department is conducting a criminal investigation into these activities. Attorney General Merrick Garland
has said the Justice Department will “follow the facts and the law wherever they may lead.” And that must include former President Trump.
The January 6 insurrection was not an isolated event. It was part of a concerted Trump effort to use his demagogic lie that the 2020 election had been stolen from him as the premise for Trump’s efforts to engineer a coup. Not a shred of evidence has ever been presented to support Trump’s claim that voter fraud affected the outcome of the election.
The challenge facing the House Committee in the hearings is to tell a compelling story as it provides its evidence of the Trump-led conspiracy to steal the presidency.
Federal district court Judge David Carter in a civil case brought against the Committee by Dr. John Eastman, Trump’s lawyer and adviser in the coup attempt, has set the framework for the hearings. Judge Carter
found that it was “more likely than not that President Trump corruptly attempted to obstruct the Joint Session of Congress on January 6, 2021.” Judge Carter
concluded that Trump and Eastman “launched a campaign to overturn a democratic election, an action unprecedented in American history […] The illegality of the plan was obvious.”
A clear case of criminality, for example, appears to be Trump’s phone call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. In that call,
Trump pressured Raffensperger to change the presidential vote count in Georgia: “All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have because we won the state.”
Trump also threatened criminal liability for Raffensperger if he did not act.
In other words, Trump, unconcerned with accuracy, wanted Raffensperger to rig the count so it would provide him with more votes than Biden. Trump’s actions appear to violate 18 U.S.C. § 371, conspiracy to defraud the United States, and 18 U.S.C. § 1512, obstruction of Congress.
By documenting a powerful case of criminal conduct, the Jan. 6 Committee investigation can play a major role in the individuals responsible for the attempted coup being prosecuted. The decision of whether to bring criminal prosecutions, however, rests with the Attorney General.
There must be individual accountability for this unprecedented attack on our democracy that was led by former President Trump. And, there must be steps taken by Congress to help ensure that any future coup attempt cannot succeed.
The Jan. 6 Committee televised hearings should be watched by all Americans.
The hearings will cut through the lies and disinformation that are the hallmark of Trump and his followers by documenting the true story of how a presidential election was nearly stolen and how patriotic Americans – from both major parties – defeated the effort.
