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US Capitol and US flag
Once upon a time there was a bipartisan congressional committee investigating a terrible crime committed against America by the Republican president of the United States. After the committee revealed shocking details about the crime in live television hearings that riveted the nation, Republican leaders told their president he had to resign. He did, leaving in disgrace.
That sounds more and more like a fairy tale. When the bipartisan January 6 House Committee investigating the violent assault on American democracy by a mob Donald Trump sent to attack the Capitol to stop Congress from certifying his election defeat by President Biden, the only Republicans courageous enough to try to join the investigation were Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger.
Cheney and Kinzinger were among a small minority of 10 House Republicans voting to impeach Trump for the attack and seven Republican senators voting to convict him. Other elected Republicans have either closed ranks behind Trump or have gone silent pretending Jan. 6 never happened.
Political Discourse?
The official position of today’s Republican party is the violent insurrectionists whose attack led to at least seven deaths and seriously injured 140 police officers, many with permanent physical disabilities or brain damage from brutal beatings were “citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.”
That’s a far cry from the Republicans serving on the 1973 bipartisan Senate Watergate Committee who considered it their patriotic duty to join Democrats in demanding Richard Nixon’s resignation when they uncovered presidential tapes of Nixon’s discussions with advisors about covering up crimes including burglaries and illegal wiretapping of their political opponents.
The House Jan. 6 Committee doesn’t need tape recordings to prove Trump’s crimes. Most Americans watched them live on television. The House Committee’s opening hearing previewed their evidence that Trump not only incited the Capitol attack but directed the plot to overthrow democracy so he could remain in power.
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Horrific Images
Filmmaker Nick Quested provided horrific images of what Capitol Police Officer Caroline Edwards described as hours of hand-to-hand combat with the raging mob. “I couldn’t believe my eyes,” she testified. “There were officers on the ground. They were bleeding. They were throwing up. I saw friends with blood all over their faces. I was slipping in people’s blood.”
Embedded with the Proud Boys, Quested captured a key meeting in a dark parking garage between the leaders of the violent white supremacist Proud Boys and Oath Keepers to coordinate their assault the next day on the Capitol. Quested was surprised they didn’t attend Trump’s rally. Instead, hundreds went directly to the Capitol in the early morning to plan the doors and windows they could bust through to lead the invasion by the large, angry mob Trump was sending to rampage through the Capitol.
Cheney and Kinzinger have been shunned by their party for participating in an effort to prevent another violent insurrection. Cheney addressed the issue in the opening session. “Tonight, I say this to my Republican colleagues who are defending the indefensible. There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain.”
Dark History
Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson representing Mississippi put it differently. “I’m from a part of the country where people justify the actions of slavery, the Ku Klux Klan and lynching. I’m reminded of that dark history as I hear voices today try to justify the actions of the insurrectionists.”
The committee will present more evidence about Trump’s illegal effort to overturn the 2020 election results in public hearings today and on Wednesday and Thursday. One of the central elements in the plot will be fraudulent documents Republicans in Wisconsin and six other states won by Biden submitted to the federal government falsely claiming Trump won their states.
Ten Wisconsin Republicans met secretly at the same time the Democratic electors Biden had won were meeting to award him Wisconsin’s 10 electoral votes. The Republicans signed fraudulent documents claiming they were “duly elected and qualified” electors casting votes for Trump. The Republican lies in seven states were the only proven election fraud aimed at stealing the 2020 election.
Refusing Trump
The plot failed because Trump’s previously subservient Vice President Mike Pence refused Trump’s screaming demand that he violate the Constitution on Jan. 6 by throwing out Biden’s votes in the seven states submitting fraudulent Republican slates of electors.
The ugliest statement attributed to Trump in the first hearing was his reaction to the mob’s bloodthirsty cries of “Hang Mike Pence!” as they chased him and his wife and daughter through the Capitol. According to staff members, as Trump gleefully watched the attack on television, he said: “Maybe our supporters have the right idea. He deserves it.”
Supporting the murder of your vice president for refusing to steal an election is a lot worse than the Watergate burglaries. There’s nothing conservative about destroying democracy. It’s time for many more Republicans to stand up against the destruction of what was once an American political party.
