House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack

Subterms

    More stories

    • 138 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      Trump Campaign Chief to Headline Jan. 6 Hearing on Election Lies

      by

      Bill Stepien is expected to appear alongside a fired Fox News editor who called Trump’s loss and a former U.S. attorney who resigned rather than go along with false claims of election fraud.WASHINGTON — The House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol plans to use the testimony of former President Donald J. Trump’s own campaign manager against him on Monday as it lays out evidence that Mr. Trump knowingly spread the lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him in an attempt to overturn his defeat.The committee plans to call Bill Stepien, the final chairman of Mr. Trump’s campaign, who is expected to be asked to detail what the campaign and the former president himself knew about his fictitious claims of widespread election fraud. Those claims will be the focus of the second in a series of hearings the panel is holding this month to reveal the findings of its sprawling investigation.After an explosive first hearing last week in prime time, leaders of the committee are aiming to keep up a steady stream of revelations about the magnitude of Mr. Trump’s plot to overturn the election and how it sowed the seeds of the violent siege of the Capitol by his supporters last year.On Monday, they plan to describe the origin and spread of Mr. Trump’s election lies, including the former president’s refusal to listen to advisers who told him that he had lost and that there was no evidence of widespread irregularities that could change the outcome. Then they plan on demonstrating the chaos those falsehoods caused throughout several states, ultimately resulting in the riot.A committee aide said the panel would focus in particular on Mr. Trump’s decision on election night to declare victory even though he had been told he did not have the numbers to win.A second panel of witnesses will include Byung J. Pak, a former U.S. attorney in Atlanta who resigned abruptly after refusing to say that widespread voter fraud had been found in Georgia.According to an internal memo made public as part of a court case, the Trump campaign knew as early as November that its outlandish fraud claims were false. Last week, the panel showed videotaped testimony of his top advisers and even the attorney general at the time, William P. Barr, saying that they had told Mr. Trump and top White House officials as much.Mr. Stepien was present for key conversations about what the data showed about Mr. Trump’s chances of succeeding in an effort to win swing states, beginning on election night. He was part of a meeting with Mr. Trump on Nov. 7, 2020, just after the election had been called by television networks in favor of President Joseph R. Biden Jr., in which he told Mr. Trump of the exceedingly low odds of success with his challenges.Mr. Trump, urged on by his lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, wanted to press forward anyway.Mr. Stepien, who rarely speaks in public, is appearing under subpoena, raising questions about how willing a witness he will be against Mr. Trump.Mr. Stepien is currently serving as an adviser to Harriet Hageman, a Republican endorsed by Mr. Trump who is mounting a primary challenge to Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming and the panel’s vice chairwoman, setting up a potentially adversarial dynamic for his questioning on Monday.Read More on the Jan. 6 House Committee HearingsMaking a Case Against Trump: The committee appears to be laying out a road map for prosecutors to indict former President Donald J. Trump. But the path to any trial is uncertain.The Meaning of the Hearings: While the public sessions aren’t going to unite the country, they could significantly affect public opinion.An Unsettling Narrative: During the first hearing, the panel presented a gripping story with a sprawling cast of characters, but only three main players: Mr. Trump, the Proud Boys and a Capitol Police officer.Trump’s Depiction: Mr. Trump was portrayed as a would-be autocrat willing to shred the Constitution to hang onto power. Liz Cheney: The vice chairwoman of the House committee has been unrepentant in continuing to blame Mr. Trump for stoking the attack on Jan. 6, 2021.The Jan. 6 committee suggested in a letter sent to Mr. Stepien that it had evidence that he was aware that the campaign was raising money by making false claims about election fraud.“As manager of the Trump 2020 re-election campaign, you oversaw all aspects of the campaign,” the letter said. “You then supervised the conversion of the Trump presidential campaign to an effort focused on ‘Stop the Steal’ messaging and related fund-raising. That messaging included the promotion of certain false claims related to voting machines despite an internal campaign memo in which campaign staff determined that such claims were false.”Mr. Stepien will appear alongside Chris Stirewalt, the former political editor at Fox News who was fired after Fox correctly called the 2020 president election in Arizona for Mr. Biden, a move that angered Mr. Trump.U.S. Attorney Byung J. Pak, who resigned after learning that Mr. Trump wanted to fire him for rejecting claims of rampant voter fraud in Georgia, in Atlanta in 2019.Bob Andres/Atlanta Journal-Constitution, via Associated PressThe second part of the hearing will turn to the reverberations of Mr. Trump’s false claims around the country, particularly in competitive states. Along with Mr. Pak, who resigned after learning that Mr. Trump wanted to fire him for rejecting claims of rampant voter fraud in Georgia, the panel is scheduled to hear from Al Schmidt, a Republican former city commissioner in Philadelphia who also stood up to Mr. Trump’s lies. Benjamin Ginsberg, a Republican election lawyer who served as the national counsel to George W. Bush’s presidential campaign and played a central role in the Florida recount of 2000, is also slated to appear.Monday’s lineup of witnesses suggests that the committee wants to chart the impact Mr. Trump’s lies had in conservative media and in various states, as well as contrasting the baseless nature of Mr. Trump’s claims with legitimate legal challenges from Republican campaigns of the past.A committee aide said the panel would present evidence during the hearing from witnesses who had investigated Mr. Trump’s claims of fraud and found them to be false.The panel also plans to show how Mr. Trump’s fiction of a stolen election was used as a fund-raising tool, bringing in hundreds of millions of dollars between Election Day 2020 and Jan. 6. A fraudulent fund-raising effort could be grounds for a possible criminal referral to the Justice Department against Mr. Trump and his allies.And some on the committee have long believed that one way they could break through to Mr. Trump’s supporters would be to prove to them that they had been duped into donating their money to a bogus cause.Aides said the committee would also try on Monday to show how the rioters who stormed the Capitol had echoed back Mr. Trump’s words, and cited him as their motivation in storming the building in an attempt to stop Congress from formalizing his defeat.Representative Zoe Lofgren, Democrat of California and the chairwoman of the House Administration Committee, is slated to play a key role presenting evidence at the hearing, aides said.Time and again, top Trump administration officials told Mr. Trump he had lost the 2020 election. But time and again, Mr. Trump pressed forward with his lies of widespread fraud.Shortly after the election, as ballots were still being counted, the top data expert in Mr. Trump’s re-election campaign told him bluntly that he was going to lose.In the weeks that followed, as Mr. Trump continued to insist that he had won, a senior Justice Department official told him repeatedly that his claims of widespread voting fraud were meritless, ultimately warning him that they would “hurt the country.”Those concerns were echoed by the top White House lawyer, who told the president that he would be entering into a “murder-suicide pact” if he continued to pursue extreme plans to try to invalidate the results of the 2020 election.Last week, the Jan. 6 panel played video of an interview showing Mr. Barr testifying that he knew the president’s claims were false, and told him so on three occasions.“I told the president it was bullshit,” Mr. Barr is heard telling the committee’s investigators. “I didn’t want to be a part of it.”Al Schmidt, a Philadelphia city commissioner, outside City Hall in Philadelphia in 2020.Michelle Gustafson for The New York TimesCommittee members previewed some of the evidence they plan to present at Monday’s hearing during television news interviews Sunday.“Former President Trump was told by multiple people — it should have been abundantly clear — that there was no evidence that showed the election was stolen, and he ignored that,” Representative Elaine Luria, Democrat of Virginia and a member of the committee, said on NBC’s “Meet The Press.”Representative Adam Kinzinger, Republican of Illinois, drew a contrast between those close to Mr. Trump who told him the truth and the “yes people” who encouraged his fantasy of a stolen election in order to please him.“If you truly believe the election was stolen, then if the president truly believed that, he’s not mentally capable to be president,” Mr. Kinzinger said on CBS’s “Face The Nation,” adding: “I think he didn’t believe it. I think the people around him didn’t believe it. This was all about keeping power against the will of the American people.”Michael S. Schmidt More

    • 63 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Trump Is Still a Threat

      by

      Donald Trump is a cancer on this country.Not only because of the way that he has behaved in it and at its helm, but because of the way that he has fundamentally changed it.On Thursday night, the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection held the first of what will be a series of public hearings. The hearing was methodical and, at times, sensational. It underscored and buttressed the alarming, central thesis: Trump, as president of the United States, took aim at the democratic process of the United States by inciting a riot at the Capitol, among other things.Throw any adjective at it — brazen, shocking, outrageous, unprecedented — they are all insufficient to capture the enormity of what he did. A president with an autocratic fetish — one who assumed office with a welcome assist from the autocratic ruler of Russia — nearly hobbled the government of the most powerful country on the planet.Yet, with all of this, a poll published in February by the Pew Research Center found that fewer Americans believed that Trump bore responsibility for the Jan. 6 riot than they did in its immediate aftermath. Nearly six in 10 Republicans believed that he bore no responsibility at all for the rioting, compared to 46 percent the year before, and in June 2021, 66 percent of Republicans said that Trump “definitely” or “probably” won the 2020 election.The committee’s hearing may put a dent in those numbers, but if history is our guide, his cult will remain unflappable and intact.This is the legacy of Trump: the alteration of our political reality.As was made clear during Thursday’s hearing, multiple people told Trump that he had lost the election and that there was no widespread fraud. It appears that he wasn’t laboring under a delusion when he attempted to steal the election; he was raging his own lie about that election.Lying was a life skill for Donald Trump. But, before entering politics, he mostly used it as a tool to inflate his assets and his ego and to sell gold-plated aspiration to new-money social climbers. His entire brand was packaging garish people’s interpretations of glamour.In that world, he regularly skirted the rules. But when he entered politics, he found rules that were in some cases even more fungible than those covering finance. Many of the constraints on the president were customs and traditions. There were rules that no one had ever pushed to enforce, because previous presidents conformed to them.In some ways, the only thing constraining Trump as president was the unwillingness of other officials — many of whom he could appoint or replace at will — to break the rules.He was like a pirate landing among an Indigenous population. Instead of appreciating the elegance of the culture and history of its rites, he focused on its weaknesses, scheming ways to exploit it, and if need be, destroy it.Donald Trump didn’t create the modern American right, but he arrived in a moment when it was thirsty for unapologetic white nationalism, when it was terrified of white replacement and when it had flung open its arms in its willingness to embrace fiction.He quickly understood that these impulses, which establishment Republicans had told their base to suppress and only whisper, were the things the base wanted to hear shouted, things the base wanted to cheer.Now, millions of Americans have fallen for a lie and follow a liar.This means that our politics still exist in Trump’s shadow. Republican politicians, afraid to buck him and afraid of the mob he controls, toe the line for him and parrot his lies. The conservative media echo chamber, hermetically sealed and resistant to reality, ensures that Trump propaganda is repeated until it is accepted without examination.The Democrats also exist in Trump’s shadow. A large part of the reason Joe Biden was selected as the Democratic nominee was not because he had the most exciting set of policies, but because Democrats desperately wanted to beat Trump, and saw Biden as the safest bet to do so.Now that he has been elected, many factions of his winning coalition feel like constituencies held hostage. Any critique of Biden, even mild and legitimate, must be tempered so as not to give ammunition to the Mar-a-Lago Menace who looks poised to attempt another run for the White House.If he does, this country could well tear itself apart. And I make that statement with absolutely no hyperbolic intent. Indeed, it is not clear to me that this country can survive him calling the shots from the sidelines now.The political system has proved too compromised by Trump’s own influence to hold Trump accountable in a way that ends this nightmare. Now, the legal system is all we have left, and Trump has been harder to pinch than flesh slathered in tanning oil.We must now wait to see if the committee has the goods not to change the minds of voters, which feels increasingly like a lost cause, but to change the minds — or quicken the spirits — of prosecutors at the Department of Justice.Trump has changed America, but we can still prevent him from destroying it.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter (@NYTopinion), and Instagram. More

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      Pence Aide Warned Against Blocking Electoral College Count, Memo Shows

      by

      Shortly before Jan. 6, Vice President Mike Pence’s chief counsel wrote that holding up the certification of the election results would violate federal law.Former Vice President Mike Pence’s chief counsel laid out in a memo the day before Jan. 6, 2021, that the vice president would violate federal law if he bowed to pressure from President Donald J. Trump to interfere with the certification of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory.The three-page memo, obtained by Politico and confirmed as authentic by The New York Times, included arguments from the chief counsel, Greg Jacob, that Mr. Pence could find himself in a legally precarious situation if he decided to block the certification of the Electoral College results either unilaterally or by calling for a 10-day delay in the proceedings.A lawyer advising Mr. Trump, John Eastman, had insisted that Mr. Pence had the power to take both of those actions, emphasizing the 10-day delay as Jan. 6 grew closer. Mr. Eastman pressed his claims in a meeting with Mr. Pence and Mr. Jacob in the Oval Office on Jan. 4.But Mr. Pence, who in the weeks after the election told Mr. Trump that he did not believe he had such power but would continue researching the matter, was given concrete guidance by his own aides.An image of Greg Jacob, the chief counsel to Vice President Mike Pence, was shown at a hearing on Thursday held by the House committee investigating the Capitol attack.Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA, via ShutterstockMr. Jacob wrote in the memo that Mr. Pence would most likely be overruled by the courts if he made such a move.“In a best-case scenario in which the courts refused to get involved, the vice president would likely find himself in an isolated standoff against both houses of Congress, as well as most or all of the applicable state legislatures, with no neutral arbiter available to break the impasse,” Mr. Jacob wrote in the memo.A spokesman for Mr. Pence declined to comment.Following its prime-time hearing this past week, the House committee investigating the Capitol riot is scheduled to hold three more hearings in the coming week, including one on Thursday at which Mr. Jacob is set to be a key witness.That session is slated to focus on the pressure campaign on Mr. Pence to insert himself into the certification of the Electoral College vote, a proceeding that is usually routine.Mr. Jacob has told the committee that he wrote the memo after the meeting with Mr. Eastman, Politico reported.Mr. Eastman’s conduct has been a focal point of the House investigation into the events that took place leading up to the riot. In March, in a civil case stemming from Mr. Eastman’s efforts to keep the committee from accessing a tranche of emails related to his advice to Mr. Trump, a federal judge said that he and Mr. Trump “more likely than not” committed crimes as they sought to overturn the results of the election.The memo from Mr. Jacob was one in a series that he wrote related to the pressure on Mr. Pence following the 2020 election. One came at the beginning of December, after Mr. Pence asked Mr. Jacob to explore what his authority was in relation to the Jan. 6 certification.Another memo, also obtained by Politico, was written on Jan. 1. It evaluated the various allegations of widespread fraud that Mr. Trump’s advisers had pointed to, including in Georgia, where Mr. Trump repeatedly made claims that officials said were baseless.The memo detailed claims from six key states — the ones for which Mr. Pence’s advisers anticipated that House lawmakers would try to challenge the certification, potentially with support from senators from those states. More

    • 150 Shares179 Views

      in Elections

      Jan. 6 Committee Appears to Lay Out Road Map for Prosecuting Trump

      by

      The first prime-time hearing into the Jan. 6 attack confronted the fundamental question that has haunted Donald J. Trump since he left office: Should he be prosecuted in a criminal court?He had means, motive and opportunity. But did Donald J. Trump commit a crime?A House committee explicitly declared that he did by conspiring to overturn an election. The attorney general, however, has not weighed in. And a jury of his peers may never hear the case.The first prime-time hearing into the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol this past week confronted the fundamental question that has haunted Mr. Trump, the 45th president, ever since he left office: Should he be prosecuted in a criminal court for his relentless efforts to defy the will of the voters and hang on to power?For two hours on Thursday night, the House committee investigating the Capitol attack detailed what it called Mr. Trump’s “illegal” and “unconstitutional” seven-part plan to prevent the transfer of power. The panel invoked the Justice Department, citing charges of seditious conspiracy filed against some of the attackers, and seemed to be laying out a road map for Attorney General Merrick B. Garland to their central target.Several former prosecutors and veteran lawyers said afterward that the hearing offered the makings of a credible criminal case for conspiracy to commit fraud or obstruction of the work of Congress.In presenting her summary of the evidence, Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming and the committee’s vice chairwoman, demonstrated that Mr. Trump was told repeatedly by his own advisers that he had lost the election yet repeatedly lied to the country by claiming it had been stolen. He pressured state and federal officials, members of Congress and even his own vice president to disregard vote tallies in key states. And he encouraged the mob led by extremist groups like the Proud Boys while making no serious effort to stop the attack once it began.“I think the committee, especially Liz Cheney, outlined a powerful criminal case against the former president,” said Neal K. Katyal, a former acting solicitor general under President Barack Obama.“A crime requires two things — a bad act and criminal intent,” Mr. Katyal said. By citing testimony by Mr. Trump’s own attorney general, a lawyer for his campaign and others who told him that he had lost and then documenting his failure to act once supporters stormed the Capitol, Mr. Katyal said, the panel addressed both of those requirements.At the hearing, Representative Liz Cheney demonstrated that Mr. Trump was told repeatedly by his own advisers that he had lost the election.Doug Mills/The New York TimesA congressional hearing, however, is not a court of law, and because there was no one there to defend Mr. Trump, witnesses were not cross-examined and evidence was not tested. The committee offered just a selection of the more than 1,000 interviews it has conducted and the more than 140,000 documents it has collected. But it remains to be seen what contrary or mitigating information may be contained in the vast research it has not released yet.Mr. Trump’s allies have dismissed the hearings as a partisan effort to damage him before the 2024 election when he may run for president again. And legal defenders argued that the facts presented by the panel did not support the conclusions that it drew.Read More on the Jan. 6 House Committee HearingsThe Meaning of the Hearings: While the public sessions aren’t going to unite the country, they could significantly affect public opinion.An Unsettling Narrative: During the first hearing, the House panel presented a gripping story with a sprawling cast of characters, but only three main players: Donald Trump, the Proud Boys and a Capitol Police officer.Trump’s Depiction: Former president Donald J. Trump was portrayed as a would-be autocrat willing to shred the Constitution to hang onto power. Liz Cheney: The vice chairwoman of the House committee has been unrepentant in continuing to blame Mr. Trump for stoking the attack on Jan. 6, 2021.“Unless there’s more evidence to come that we don’t know about, I don’t see a criminal case against the former president,” said Robert W. Ray, a former independent counsel who investigated President Bill Clinton and later served as a defense lawyer for Mr. Trump at his first Senate impeachment trial.“Whatever the Proud Boys had in mind when they stormed the Capitol, I don’t see how you’d be able to prove that Trump knew that that was the purpose of the conspiracy,” Mr. Ray added. “Whether or not he ‘lit the fuse’ that caused that to happen, the government would have to prove he knowingly joined that conspiracy with that objective.”Beyond the legal requirements of making a criminal case, the prospect of prosecuting a former president also would entail far deeper considerations and broader consequences. Criminal charges against Mr. Trump brought by the administration of the man who defeated him would further inflame an already polarized country. It would consume national attention for months or longer and potentially set a precedent for less meritorious cases against future presidents by successors of the opposite party.“That’s a hill that no federal prosecutor has tried to climb, prosecuting a former president,” said John Q. Barrett, a former associate independent counsel in the Iran-contra investigation. “It’s very fraught,” he said. “It’s a massive undertaking as an investigation, as a trial, as a national saga and trauma.” But he added that accountability was important and that “the threat to the continuity of our government is about as grave as it gets.”All of which is almost certainly going through the mind of Mr. Garland, a mild-mannered, highly deliberative former federal appeals court judge who has largely kept mum about his thinking. A Justice Department spokesman said Mr. Garland watched the hearing but would not elaborate.Democrats have attacked the attorney general for not already prosecuting Mr. Trump, even though a federal judge opined in March in a related civil case that the former president and a lawyer who advised him had most likely broken the law by trying to overturn the election. Mr. Garland has resisted the pressure. While he has called the investigation into the Jan. 6 attack the most urgent work in the history of his department, he has refused to forecast where the inquiry will go as investigators continue evaluating evidence.“We are not avoiding cases that are political or cases that are controversial or sensitive,” he told NPR in March. “What we are avoiding is making decisions on a political basis, on a partisan basis.”Democrats have attacked Attorney General Merrick B. Garland for not already prosecuting Mr. Trump, deeming it a miscarriage of justice.Sarah Silbiger for The New York TimesMany officials and rank-and-file prosecutors scattered throughout the 115,000-person Justice Department have long believed that Mr. Trump acted corruptly, particularly in pressuring their own department to parrot his baseless claims of election fraud, according to several people involved in such conversations who were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.But some career employees expressed fear that as the hearings continued, they would raise expectations for a prosecution that may not be met.The committee “was good at making the case that Donald Trump’s actions were completely horrific and that he deserves to be held accountable for them,” said Matthew Miller, a former Justice Department spokesman during the Obama administration. “But an open-and-shut case on television is different from proving someone violated a criminal statute.”With public attention fixated on Mr. Trump, the Justice Department’s work has proceeded along three tracks: charge the people who attacked the Capitol; piece together larger conspiracies, including sedition, involving some of the assailants; and identify possible crimes that took place before the assault.In the 17 months since the attack, more than 840 defendants from nearly all 50 states have been arrested. Of those, about 250 have been charged with assaulting, resisting or impeding the police, and members of two far-right groups have been charged with seditious conspiracy, a rare accusation that represents the most serious criminal charges brought in the department’s sprawling investigation.Prosecutors are scrutinizing the plan by Mr. Trump’s allies to create alternate slates of pro-Trump electors to overturn Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory in key swing states, with a federal grand jury issuing subpoenas to people involved. That investigation brings federal prosecutors closer to Mr. Trump’s inner circle than any other inquiry. Mr. Trump also faces the threat of prosecution by a local Georgia prosecutor investigating his efforts to overturn the state’s vote.No sitting or former president has ever been put on trial. Aaron Burr was charged with treason after leaving office as vice president in a highly politicized case directed from the White House by President Thomas Jefferson, but he was acquitted after a sensational trial. Ulysses S. Grant, while president, was arrested for speeding in his horse and buggy. Spiro T. Agnew resigned as vice president as part of a plea bargain in a corruption case.The closest a former president came to indictment was after Richard M. Nixon resigned in the Watergate scandal in 1974, but his successor, Gerald R. Ford, short-circuited the investigation by preemptively pardoning him, reasoning that the country had to move on. Mr. Clinton, to avoid perjury charges after leaving office, agreed on his last full day in the White House to a deal with Mr. Ray in which he admitted giving false testimony under oath about his affair with Monica S. Lewinsky, temporarily surrendered his law license and paid a $25,000 fine.Should the Justice Department indict Mr. Trump, a trial would be vastly different from House hearings in ways that affect the scope and pace of any inquiry. Investigators would have to scour thousands of hours of video footage and the full contents of devices and online accounts they have accessed for evidence bolstering their case, as well as anything that a defense lawyer could use to knock it down. Federal prosecutors would probably also have to convince appeals court judges and a majority of Supreme Court justices of the validity of their case.For all of the pressure that the House committee has put on the Justice Department to act, it has resisted sharing information. In April, the department asked the committee for transcripts of witness interviews, but the panel has not agreed to turn over the documents because its work is continuing.Although critics have faulted Mr. Garland, attorneys general do not generally drive the day-to-day work of investigations. Mr. Garland is briefed nearly every day on the inquiry’s progress, but it is being led by Matthew M. Graves, the U.S. attorney in Washington, who is working with national security and criminal division officials. Lisa O. Monaco, the deputy attorney general, broadly oversees the investigation.“Whether fair or not, Garland’s tenure will be defined by whether or not he indicts Trump,” Mr. Miller said. “The Justice Department may not indict Trump. Prosecutors may not believe they have the evidence to secure a conviction. But that will now be interpreted as a choice by Garland, not as a reality that was forced upon him by the facts of the investigation.” More

    • 50 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      Donald Trump, American Monster

      by

      WASHINGTON — Monsters are not what they used to be.I’m reading “Frankenstein” by Mary Shelley for school and the monster is magnificent. He starts out with an elegance of mind and sweetness of temperament, reading Goethe’s “The Sorrows of Young Werther” and gathering firewood for a poor family. But his creator, Victor Frankenstein, abandons him and refuses him a mate to calm his loneliness. The creature finds no one who does not recoil in fear and disgust from his stitched-together appearance, his yellow skin and eyes, and black lips. Embittered, he seeks revenge on his creator and the world.“Every where I see bliss, from which I alone am irrevocably excluded,” he laments. “I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend.”Before he disappears into the Arctic at the end of the book, he muses that once he had “high thoughts of honour,” until his “frightful catalogue” of malignant deeds piled up.Shelley’s monster, unlike ours, has self-awareness, and a reason to wreak havoc. He knows how to feel guilty and when to leave the stage. Our monster’s malignity stems from pure narcissistic psychopathy — and he refuses to leave the stage or cease his vile mendacity.It never for a moment crossed Donald Trump’s mind that an American president committing sedition would be a debilitating, corrosive thing for the country. It was just another way for the Emperor of Chaos to burnish his title.We listened Thursday night to the frightful catalogue of Trump’s deeds. They are so beyond the pale, so hard to fathom, that in some ways, it’s all still sinking in.The House Jan. 6 committee’s prime-time hearing was not about Trump as a bloviating buffoon who stumbled into the presidency. It was about Trump as a callous monster, and many will come away convinced that he should be criminally charged and put in jail. Lock him up!The hearing drove home the fact that Trump was deadly serious about overthrowing the government. If his onetime lap dog Mike Pence was strung up on the gallows outside the Capitol for refusing to help Trump hold onto his office illegitimately, Trump said, so be it. “Maybe our supporters have the right idea,” he remarked that day, chillingly, noting that his vice president “deserves it.”Liz Cheney cleverly used the words of former Trump aides to show that, despite his malevolent bleating, Trump knew there was no fraud on a level that would have changed the election results.“I made it clear I did not agree with the idea of saying the election was stolen and putting out this stuff, which I told the president was bullshit,” William Barr, Trump’s attorney general, said.Breaking from her father, Ivanka Trump — in a taped deposition — said she embraced Barr’s version of reality: “I respect Attorney General Barr. So I accepted what he was saying.”(Her husband, Jared Kushner, won the prize for gall in his deposition: He was too busy arranging pardons for sleazeballs to pay attention to whether Trump aides were threatening to quit over the sleazeball in the Oval.)Trump’s data experts told him bluntly that he had lost. “So there’s no there there,” Mark Meadows commented.Trump just couldn’t stand being labeled a loser — his father’s bête noire. He maniacally subverted the election out of pure selfishness and wickedness, knowing it is easy to manipulate people on social media with the Big Lie.It was fine with him if his followers broke the law and attacked the police and went to jail, while he praised their “love” from afar. It’s amazing that no lawmakers were killed.Everywhere you look, there’s something that makes your blood run cold. The monster in “Frankenstein” is not the only one who has forsaken “thoughts of honour.”Russia, also in the grip of a monster, is invading and destroying a neighboring democracy for no reason, except Vladimir Putin’s delusions of grandeur.In Uvalde, the unfathomable story unspools about how the police delayed rescuing schoolchildren for an hour because a commander was worried about the officers’ safety.Greedy golf icons joined a tour underwritten by the Saudis, even though the Saudi crown prince ordered a journalist dismembered. (Kushner is under investigation about whether he traded on his government position to secure a $2 billion investment from the Saudis for his new private equity firm.)As Bennie Thompson, the chairman of the committee, noted, when the Capitol was attacked in 1814, it was by the British. This time it was by an enemy within, egged on by the man at the heart of the democracy he swore to protect.“They did so at the encouragement of the president of the United States,” Thompson said of the mob, “trying to stop the transfer of power, a precedent that had stood for 220 years.”It’s mind-boggling that so many people still embrace Trump when it’s so plain that he cares only about himself. He was quick to throw Ivanka off the sled on Friday, indicating her opinion did not count since she “was not involved in looking at, or studying, Election results. She had long since checked out.”Let some conservatives dismiss the hearings as “A Snooze Fest.” Let Fox News churlishly refuse to run them.The hearing was mesmerizing, describing a horror story with predatory Proud Boys and a monster at its center that even Mary Shelley could have appreciated. The ratings were boffo, with nearly 20 million viewers.Caroline Edwards, the tough Capitol Police officer who suffered a concussion, was sprayed in her eyes and got back up to return to the fight, described a hellscape.“I was slipping in people’s blood,” she recalled. “You know, I — I was catching people as they fell. I — you know, I was — it was carnage.”In his dystopian Inaugural speech, Trump promised to end “American carnage.” Instead, he delivered it. Now he needs to be held accountable for his attempted coup — and not just in the court of public opinion.Trump supporters trying to break through a police barrier at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.John Minchillo/Associated PressThe Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

    • 188 Shares159 Views

      in Elections

      El comité sobre el ataque al Capitolio muestra a Trump como un aspirante a autócrata

      by

      Según el comité que investiga el ataque al Capitolio del 6 de enero, Donald Trump llevó a cabo una conspiración en siete partes para anular una elección democrática libre y justa.Es muy probable que en los 246 años de historia de Estados Unidos nunca se haya hecho una acusación más comprometedora contra un presidente estadounidense que la presentada el jueves por la noche en una sala de audiencias cavernosa del Congreso, donde el futuro de la democracia parecía estar en juego.A otros mandatarios se les ha acusado de actuar mal, incluso de cometer delitos e infracciones, pero el caso en contra de Donald Trump formulado por la comisión bipartidista de la Cámara de Representantes que investiga el ataque al Capitolio del 6 de enero de 2021 no solo describe a un presidente deshonesto, sino a un aspirante a autócrata dispuesto a violar la Constitución para aferrarse al poder a toda costa.Como lo describió la comisión durante su audiencia televisada, a la hora de mayor audiencia, Trump ejecutó una conspiración en siete partes para anular una elección democrática libre y justa. Según el panel, le mintió al pueblo estadounidense, ignoró todas las pruebas que refutaban sus falsas denuncias de fraude, presionó a los funcionarios estatales y federales para que anularan los resultados de las elecciones que favorecían a su contrincante, alentó a una turba violenta a atacar el Capitolio e incluso señaló su apoyo a la ejecución de su propio vicepresidente.“El 6 de enero fue la culminación de un intento de golpe de Estado, un intento descarado, como dijo uno de los alborotadores poco después del 6 de enero, de derrocar al gobierno”, dijo el representante demócrata por Misisipi, Bennie Thompson, presidente de la comisión especial. “La violencia no fue un accidente. Representa la última oportunidad de Trump, la más desesperada, para detener la transferencia de poder”.Representatives Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi, and Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, led the first hearing on the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, which included testimony from a Capitol police officer and a documentary filmmaker.Kenny Holston for The New York TimesLas palabras de los propios asesores y personajes nombrados por Trump fueron las más incriminatorias. Se proyectaron en video en una pantalla gigante sobre el estrado de la comisión y se transmitieron a una audiencia de televisión nacional. Se pudo ver cómo su propio fiscal general le dijo a Trump que sus denuncias de una elección falsa eran “patrañas”. Su abogado de campaña testificó que no había suficientes pruebas de fraude para cambiar el resultado. Hasta su propia hija, Ivanka Trump, reconoció haber aceptado la conclusión de que la elección no fue robada, como su padre seguía afirmando.Read More on the Jan. 6 House Committee HearingsThe Meaning of the Hearings: While the public sessions aren’t going to unite the country, they could significantly affect public opinion.An Unsettling Narrative: During the first hearing, the House panel presented a gripping story with a sprawling cast of characters, but only three main players: Donald Trump, the Proud Boys and a Capitol Police officer.Trump’s Depiction: Former president Donald J. Trump was portrayed as a would-be autocrat willing to shred the Constitution to hang onto power. Liz Cheney: The vice chairwoman of the House committee has been unrepentant in continuing to blame Mr. Trump for stoking the attack on Jan. 6, 2021.Buena parte de las pruebas fueron presentadas por la principal figura republicana en la comisión, la representante por Wyoming Liz Cheney, quien ha sido condenada al ostracismo por Trump y por buena parte de su partido por condenar una y otra vez las acciones del entonces presidente después de la elección. Cheney planteó con firmeza el caso y luego se dirigió a sus compañeros republicanos que han optado por apoyar a su derrotado expresidente y justificar sus acciones.“A mis colegas republicanos que defienden lo indefendible les digo: llegará el día en el que Donald Trump se haya ido, pero el deshonor de ustedes permanecerá”, declaró.Muchos de los detalles ya se habían dado a conocer y muchas interrogantes sobre las acciones de Trump quedaron sin respuesta por ahora, pero Cheney resumió los hallazgos de la comisión de una forma implacable y acusadora.Un grupo de personas en Washington que se reunió para ver la audiencia, escuchaba a la representante Liz Cheney, republicana por Wyoming.Shuran Huang para The New York TimesAlgunas de las nuevas revelaciones y las confirmaciones de las noticias recientes fueron suficientes para provocar exclamaciones de asombro en el recinto y, tal vez, en las salas de todo el país. Se informó que luego de que se le dijo que la multitud del 6 de enero coreaba “Cuelguen a Mike Pence”, el vicepresidente que desafió las presiones del presidente para bloquear la transferencia de poder, Trump respondió: “Quizá nuestros seguidores tengan la idea correcta”. Mike Pence, agregó, “se lo merece”.Cheney, vicepresidenta del panel, informó que en la víspera del ataque del 6 de enero, miembros del propio gabinete de Trump hablaron de invocar la Vigésima Quinta Enmienda para destituir al entonces presidente del cargo. Reveló que el representante por Pensilvania Scott Perry y “otros congresistas republicanos” que habían participado en el intento de anular la elección buscaron obtener indultos de Trump durante sus últimos días en el cargo.Cheney reprodujo un video en el que se veía a Jared Kushner, yerno del exmandatario y asesor principal que después de la elección se ausentó en lugar de enfrentar a los teóricos de la conspiración que incitaban a Trump, desechar con displicencia las amenazas de Pat A. Cipollone, consejero de la Casa Blanca, y otros abogados de presentar su renuncia en señal de protesta. “Me pareció que solo eran lloriqueos, para ser sincero”, declaró Kushner.También la vicepresidenta del comité señaló que mientras Pence tomó medidas reiteradas para buscar asistencia y detener a la turba el 6 de enero, el presidente no hizo tal esfuerzo. En cambio, su jefe de gabinete de la Casa Blanca, Mark Meadows, trató de convencer al general Mark A. Milley, presidente del Estado Mayor Conjunto, de fingir que Trump estaba activamente involucrado.“Dijo: ‘Tenemos que eliminar el relato de que el vicepresidente está tomando todas las decisiones’”, dijo el general Milley en un testimonio grabado en video. “‘Necesitamos imponer la versión de que el presidente todavía está a cargo, y que las cosas están firmes o estables’, o palabras en ese sentido. Inmediatamente interpreté eso como política, política, política”.Trump no tuvo aliados en la comisión de nueve integrantes de la Cámara de Representantes y él y sus seguidores rechazaron el trabajo del panel con el argumento de que es un intento partidista para desprestigiarlo. En Fox News, que optó por no transmitir la audiencia, Sean Hannity se esmeraba por cambiar el tema y atacó a la comisión por no centrarse en las violaciones de seguridad del Capitolio, de las que culpa principalmente a la presidenta de la Cámara de Representantes, Nancy Pelosi, aunque el senador por Kentucky Mitch McConnell, entonces líder de la mayoría republicana, compartía con ella el control del edificio en ese momento.Antes de la audiencia, Trump trató una vez más de reescribir la historia al presentar el ataque al Capitolio como una manifestación legítima de agravio público contra unas elecciones robadas. “El 6 de enero no fue solo una protesta, sino que representó el mayor movimiento en la historia de nuestro país para hacer a Estados Unidos grandioso de nuevo”, escribió en su nuevo sitio de redes sociales.El panel reprodujo un video de Ivanka Trump, la hija de Trump y exasesora de la Casa Blanca, testificando a puerta cerrada.Kenny Holston para The New York TimesTrump no es el primer presidente que ha sido señalado por mala conducta, infracción de la ley o incluso violación de la Constitución. Andrew Johnson y Bill Clinton fueron acusados ​​por la Cámara de Representantes, aunque absueltos por el Senado. John Tyler se puso del lado de la Confederación durante la Guerra de Secesión. Richard M. Nixon renunció bajo amenaza de juicio político por abusar de su poder para encubrir actividades corruptas de campaña. Warren G. Harding tuvo el escándalo del Teapot Dome y Ronald Reagan el caso Irán-Contras.Pero los delitos alegados en la mayoría de esos casos palidecen en comparación con las acusaciones contra Trump, y aunque Tyler se puso en contra del país que una vez dirigió, murió antes de que pudiera rendir cuentas. Nixon enfrentó audiencias durante Watergate no muy diferentes a las que comenzaron el jueves por la noche y estuvo involucrado en otros escándalos más allá del robo que finalmente derivó en su salida. Pero la deshonestidad flagrante y la incitación a la violencia expuestas el jueves eclipsaron incluso sus fechorías, según diversos académicos.Trump, por supuesto, ya fue impugnado en dos ocasiones y absuelto otras dos, la segunda por su involucramiento en el ataque del 6 de enero. Pero, aun así, el caso en su contra ahora es mucho más amplio y expansivo, después de que la comisión llevó a cabo unas 1000 entrevistas y obtuvo más de 100.000 páginas de documentos.Lo que el comité intentaba demostrar era que no se trataba de un presidente con preocupaciones razonables sobre el fraude o una protesta que se salió de control. En cambio, el panel estaba tratando de obtener las pruebas de que Trump formó parte de una conspiración criminal contra la democracia; que sabía que no había un fraude generalizado porque su propio entorno se lo dijo, que, de manera intencional, convocó a una turba para que detuviera la entrega del poder a Joseph R. Biden Jr. y se quedó cruzado de brazos sin hacer casi nada cuando el ataque comenzó.Aún no sabemos si el panel puede cambiar las opiniones públicas sobre esos acontecimientos, pero muchos estrategas y analistas políticos piensan que es poco probable. Con medios más fragmentados y una sociedad más polarizada, la mayoría de los estadounidenses ya tienen una opinión sobre el 6 de enero y solo escuchan a quienes la comparten.Sin embargo, había otro espectador de las audiencias, el fiscal general Merrick B. Garland. Si la comisión estaba exponiendo lo que consideraba una acusación formal contra el expresidente, parecía estar invitando al Departamento de Justicia a seguir el caso de verdad con un gran jurado y en un tribunal de justicia.Al adelantar la historia que se contará en las próximas semanas, Cheney casi le escribió el guion a Garland. La representante dijo: “Van a escuchar sobre complots para cometer conspiración sediciosa el 6 de enero, un delito definido en nuestras leyes como conspirar para derrocar, destituir o destruir por la fuerza el gobierno de Estados Unidos u oponerse por la fuerza a la autoridad del mismo”.Pero si Garland no está de acuerdo y las audiencias de este mes resultan ser el único juicio al que se enfrente Trump por sus esfuerzos para anular las elecciones, Cheney y sus compañeros de la comisión estaban decididos a asegurarse de que, al menos, sea condenado por el jurado de la historia.Peter Baker es el corresponsal jefe de la Casa Blanca y ha cubierto a los últimos cinco presidentes para el Times y The Washington Post. También es autor de seis libros, el más reciente The Man Who Ran Washington: The Life and Times of James A. Baker III. @peterbakernyt • Facebook More

    • 163 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      The Insurrection Didn’t End on Jan. 6. The Hearings Need to Prove That.

      by

      The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol begins its hearings tonight for the American public, hoping to shine a spotlight on the discoveries from its months of painstaking inquiry. How should we measure success?As veterans of congressional and other official misconduct investigations, we will be watching for whether the committee persuades the American people that the insurrection didn’t end on Jan. 6, 2021, but continues, in places all across the country; motivates Americans to fight back in the midterm elections; and, if warranted, encourages prosecutors to bring charges against those who may have committed crimes, up to and including former President Donald Trump.The future of our democracy may well depend on the achievement of these objectives.First, the committee must use the televised hearings to emphasize to viewers that Jan. 6 was but one battle in a wider war against American democracy. Yes, there are gaping holes that remain to be filled in on the events of the day itself, like Mr. Trump’s 187-minute refusal to intervene while the mob was violently attacking the Capitol and the 457-minute gap in White House phone records. But the hearings must widen the scope to a larger narrative that begins in the run-up to the insurrection and continues in its long aftermath.The through-line of that narrative runs roughly from Mr. Trump’s declaration in August 2020 that the election could be “the greatest fraud in history” to his attacks through misinformation and spurious lawsuits on a fair election and his exhortation to his supporters to march to the Capitol on Jan. 6 and continues in the scores of “Big Lie”-driven bills and midterm candidates roiling American politics from coast to coast.The committee enjoys an advantage for its presentation: the absence of Republicans like Jim Jordan and Matt Gaetz, who have too often brought a circus atmosphere to House hearings. Mr. Jordan was barred from serving by the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, when the committee was being formed, and House Republican leadership subsequently boycotted broader representation. Fortunately, two Republicans are serving — Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger. A bipartisan, unified committee will ensure that the drama will come from the story itself rather than the shenanigans of some committee members.The hearings must also inspire action. In this setting, that would normally mean triggering legislative reforms. After Watergate, Congress passed new laws as safeguards against systemic abuse. But with today’s politics, new bills are unlikely to see broad support. The committee must navigate around that logjam — and explain that the Big Lie is still going strong and motivate Americans to defeat it at the ballot box.Just last week, in Pennsylvania, Dr. Mehmet Oz, a Trump-endorsed election skeptic, became the Republican Senate nominee. If he becomes the deciding vote in a closely divided Senate, that will not bode well for reform legislation to prevent election sabotage — and for honest certification of future presidential electors.In Pennsylvania, Dr. Oz will actually be the less intense “Stop the Steal” Republican candidate. Doug Mastriano, who was a leader in efforts to overturn the 2020 election in the state (and was subpoenaed by the committee), won the Republican primary for governor. Across the country, Mr. Trump has endorsed over 180 Republican candidates, most of whom have supported his false stolen-election claims. This year, they have, in effect, set up a counternarrative to the committee’s work.To elucidate the threat to democracy, the committee doesn’t need to wade into overt electioneering. It simply needs to maintain a relentless focus on the continuing threat of the Big Lie.The committee can do that without sacrificing bipartisanship and by maintaining objectivity because no party has a monopoly on pro-democracy candidates, as proved by the officials of both parties who came together to defend democracy in 2020. In other nations where democracy has been threatened, leaders of widely varying ideologies have set aside partisanship and joined forces against illiberalism. The bipartisan committee and other Democrats and Republicans must make clear the larger stakes represented by Mr. Trump’s election-denying allies.Finally, the hearings should compile and make accessible as much evidence as it can to aid federal and state prosecutors who might bring charges against possible wrongdoers. Ultimately, it’s up to those prosecutors — most prominently at the Justice Department and in Fulton County, Ga. — to act on the evidence. But the committee can motivate and support them. Hearings that develop a coherent, grounded and galvanizing narrative necessary for a successful prosecution will help prosecutors, as well as the media and the public, to understand any possible crimes.If the evidence warrants it, the committee should not shy away from transmitting criminal referrals. Alternatively, it could share a Watergate-style “road map” that could serve as a guide to the evidence without drawing legal conclusions. Congress has amassed a mountain of information over the course of its investigation — which includes taking over 1,000 depositions — and prosecutors should benefit from that.The ultimate success of the committee rests on whether it uses the hearings to build a partnership with American voters to see the truth of what happened on Jan. 6, 2021, and what is still happening.Norman Eisen served as special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee during the first Trump impeachment. E. Danya Perry is a former federal prosecutor and a New York State corruption investigator.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More