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      Mike Pence Seen as Key Witness in Jan. 6 Investigation

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      Getting the former vice president to answer questions under oath could be crucial as the House panel focuses on Donald Trump’s responsibility for the Capitol riot.As the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol rushes to gather evidence and conduct interviews, how far it will be able to go in holding former President Donald J. Trump accountable increasingly appears to hinge on one possible witness: former Vice President Mike Pence.Since the committee was formed last summer, Mr. Pence’s lawyer and the panel have been talking informally about whether he would be willing to speak to investigators, people briefed on the discussions said. But as Mr. Pence began sorting through a complex calculation about his cooperation, he indicated to the committee that he was undecided, they said.To some degree, the current situation reflects negotiating strategies by both sides, with the committee eager to suggest an air of inevitability about Mr. Pence answering its questions and the former vice president’s advisers looking for reasons to limit his political exposure from a move that would further complicate his ambitions to run for president in 2024.But there also appears to be growing tension.In recent weeks, Mr. Pence is said by people familiar with his thinking to have grown increasingly disillusioned with the idea of voluntary cooperation. He has told aides that the committee has taken a sharp partisan turn by openly considering the potential for criminal referrals to the Justice Department about Mr. Trump and others. Such referrals, in Mr. Pence’s view, appear designed to hurt Republican chances of winning control of Congress in November.And Mr. Pence, they said, has grown annoyed that the committee is publicly signaling that it has secured a greater degree of cooperation from his top aides than it actually has, something he sees as part of a pattern of Democrats trying to turn his team against Mr. Trump.For the committee, Mr. Pence’s testimony under oath would be an opportunity to establish in detail how Mr. Trump’s pressuring him to block the certification of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory brought the country to the brink of a constitutional crisis and helped inspire the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.It could also be vital to the committee in deciding whether it has sufficient evidence to make a criminal referral of Mr. Trump to the Justice Department, as a number of its members have said they could consider doing. The potential charge floated by some members of the committee is violation of the federal law that prohibits obstructing an official proceeding before Congress.Members of the House select committee on Jan. 6 have said they could consider criminal referrals to the Justice Department for Mr. Trump and others.Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesThe combination of the pressure brought to bear on Mr. Pence and Mr. Trump’s repeated public exhortations about his vice president — “If Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election,” he told supporters on the Ellipse just before they marched to the Capitol — could help the committee build a well-documented narrative linking Mr. Trump to the temporary halting of the vote certification through rioters focused, at his urging, on Mr. Pence.A criminal referral from the committee would carry little legal weight, but could increase public pressure on the Justice Department. The department has given little indication of whether it is seriously considering building a case against Mr. Trump.Understand the Jan. 6 InvestigationBoth the Justice Department and a House select committee are investigating the events of the Capitol riot. Here’s where they stand:Inside the House Inquiry: From a nondescript office building, the panel has been quietly ramping up its sprawling and elaborate investigation.Criminal Referrals, Explained: Can the House inquiry end in criminal charges? These are some of the issues confronting the committee.Garland’s Remarks: Facing pressure from Democrats, Attorney General Merrick Garland vowed that the D.O.J. would pursue its inquiry into the riot “at any level.”A Big Question Remains: Will the Justice Department move beyond charging the rioters themselves?Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said last week that federal prosecutors remained “committed to holding all Jan. 6 perpetrators, at any level, accountable under law — whether they were present that day or were otherwise criminally responsible for the assault on our democracy.” But he did not mention Mr. Trump or indicate whether the department considered obstruction of Congress a charge that would fit the circumstances.There are nonetheless some early indications that federal prosecutors working on charging the Capitol rioters are looking carefully at Mr. Trump’s pressure on Mr. Pence — and his efforts to rally his supporters to keep up that pressure even after Mr. Pence decided that he would not block certification of the Electoral College results.In plea negotiations, federal prosecutors recently began asking defense lawyers for some of those charged in Jan. 6 cases whether their clients would admit in sworn statements that they stormed the Capitol believing that Mr. Trump wanted them to stop Mr. Pence from certifying the election. In theory, such statements could help connect the violence at the Capitol directly to Mr. Trump’s demands that Mr. Pence help him stave off his defeat.Gina Bisignano, a Beverly Hills beautician who helped her fellow Trump supporters smash at a window at the Capitol, noted in court papers connected to her plea that she had marched on the building specifically after hearing Mr. Trump encourage Mr. Pence “to do the right thing.”While in the crowd, the papers say, Ms. Bisignano filmed herself saying, “We are marching on the Capitol to put some pressure on Mike Pence.” The papers also note that once Ms. Bisignano reached the building, she started telling others “what Pence’s done,” and encouraged people carrying tools like hatchets to break the window.Similarly, Matthew Greene, a member of the Central New York chapter of the Proud Boys, said in court papers connected to his own guilty plea that he had conspired with other members of the far-right group to “send a message to legislators and Vice President Pence” who were inside the Capitol certifying the final stage of the election.“Greene hoped that his actions and those of his co-conspirators would cause legislators and the vice president to act differently during the course of the certification of the Electoral College vote than they would have otherwise,” the papers said.There are early indications that federal prosecutors working on charging the Capitol rioters are looking carefully at Mr. Trump’s pressure on Mr. Pence.Cooper Neill for The New York TimesMr. Trump’s pressure campaign on Mr. Pence has been well established in news reports and books over the past year. Mr. Trump, aided at times by a little-known conservative lawyer, John Eastman, repeatedly pressured Mr. Pence to intervene in Congress’s certification of the 2020 presidential election, saying he had the power to delay or alter the outcome.Mr. Pence consulted a variety of people in weighing what to do, and when he ultimately refused, Mr. Trump attacked him with harsh words.Once the mob stormed the Capitol, with some rioters chanting for Mr. Pence to be hanged, Mr. Trump initially brushed aside calls from aides and allies to call them off.In the last week, around the anniversary of the Jan. 6 riot, both the chairman of the committee, Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi, and its vice chairwoman, Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, have suggested they want Mr. Pence to testify voluntarily.On Friday, Mr. Thompson told NPR that the committee might issue Mr. Pence a formal invitation as soon as the end of the month. That same day, another committee member, Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California, underlined Mr. Pence’s importance in a television interview, saying he viewed him “as an indispensable person to talk to.”A refusal by Mr. Pence to cooperate could lead the committee to take the highly unusual move of subpoenaing a former vice president, setting up a potential court fight that could delay a resolution for months as the committee tries to wrap up its work before the election.Mr. Pence’s personal lawyer, Richard Cullen, began discussions this summer with the top investigator on the House Jan. 6 committee, Timothy Heaphy, a former federal prosecutor. Mr. Cullen had worked alongside Mr. Heaphy at the same law firm several years ago.Key Figures in the Jan. 6 InquiryCard 1 of 10The House investigation. More

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      No One Is Coming to Save Us From the ‘Dagger at the Throat of America’

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      This article is part of a collection on the events of Jan. 6, one year later. Read more in a note from Times Opinion’s politics editor Ezekiel Kweku in our Opinion Today newsletter.The saturation coverage of the anniversary of the Jan. 6 insurrection and of Donald Trump’s attempt to bully his way into a reversal of his loss in the 2020 presidential election has felt dispiriting. More than 70 percent of Republican voters say that they believe Mr. Trump’s false claim of a stolen election, and 59 percent say that accepting the Big Lie is an important part of what it means to be a Republican today.As we all know, the hyperpolarized, social media-driven information environment makes it virtually impossible to persuade those voters that the 2020 election was fairly run. Those who believe the last election was stolen will be more likely to accept a stolen election for their side next time. They are more willing to see violence as a means of resolving election disputes. Political operatives are laying the groundwork for future election sabotage and the federal government has done precious little to minimize the risk.Many people who are not dispirited by such findings are uninterested. Exhausted by four years of the Trump presidency and a lingering pandemic, some Americans appear to have responded to the risks to our democracy by simply tuning out the news and hoping that things will just work out politically by 2024.We must not succumb to despair or indifference. It won’t be easy, but there is a path forward if we begin acting now, together, to shore up our fragile election ecosystem.Let’s begin by reviewing some of the key problems. Those who administer elections have faced threats of violence and harassment. One in four election administrators say that they plan to retire before 2024. Republican election and elected officials who stood up to Mr. Trump’s attempt to rig the 2020 vote count, like Georgia’s Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, who refused Mr. Trump’s entreaties to “find” 11,780 votes to flip the election to him, are being pushed out or challenged for their jobs in primaries by people embracing Mr. Trump’s false claims, like Representative Jody Hice.The new Republicans running elections or certifying or counting votes may have more allegiance to Mr. Trump or his successor in 2024 than to a fair vote count, creating conditions for Democrats to join Republicans in believing the election system is rigged. If Mr. Hice is Georgia’s Secretary of State in 2024 and declares Mr. Trump the winner of the 2024 election after having embraced the lie that Mr. Trump won Georgia in 2020, which Democrats will accept that result?Trumpist election administrators and Mr. Trump’s meddling in Republican primaries and gerrymandered Republican legislatures and congressional districts create dangerous electoral conditions. They make it more likely that state legislatures will try to overturn the will of the people — as Mr. Trump unsuccessfully urged in 2020 — and select alternative slates of presidential electors if a Democrat wins in their states in 2024. A Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2025 could count the rogue, legislatively submitted slates of presidential electors instead of those fairly reflecting actual election results in the states. In the meantime, some Republican states are passing or considering additional laws that would make election sabotage more likely.The federal government so far has taken few steps to increase the odds of free and fair elections in 2024. Despite the barely bipartisan impeachment of Mr. Trump for inciting an insurrection and the barely bipartisan majority vote in the U.S. Senate for conviction, Mr. Trump was neither convicted under the necessary two-thirds vote of the Senate nor barred from running for office again by Congress, as he could have been under Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment for inciting insurrection. While the Department of Justice has prosecuted the rioters — obtaining convictions and plea agreements for hundreds who trespassed and committed violence — so far no one in Mr. Trump’s circle, much less Mr. Trump, has been charged with federal crimes connected to Jan. 6 events. He faces potential criminal action in Georgia for his call with Mr. Raffensperger, but neither indictment nor conviction by a jury is assured.Congress has fallen down, too. House and Senate Republicans bear the greatest share of the blame. Some were just fine with Mr. Trump’s authoritarian tendencies. Others abhorred his actions, but have done nothing of substance to counteract these risks. The Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, gave an impassioned speech against Mr. Trump’s actions after Jan. 6, but he did not vote for conviction, perhaps fearing the wrath of the Republican base.More surprisingly, Democratic House and Senate leaders have not acted as if the very survival of American democracy is at issue, even though leading global experts on democratic backsliding and transitions into authoritarianism have been sounding the alarm.President Biden put it well in his Jan. 6 anniversary speech about Mr. Trump and his allies holding “a dagger at the throat of America, at American democracy.” But we need action, not just strong words.Here are the three principles that should guide action supporting democratic institutions and the rule of law going forward.To begin with, Democrats should not try to go it alone in preserving free and fair elections. Some Democrats, like Marc Elias, one of the leading Democratic election lawyers, are willing to write off the possibility of finding Republican partners because most Republicans have failed to stand up to Mr. Trump, and even those few Republicans who have do not support Democrats’ broader voting rights agenda, such as passage of the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.Flying solo is a big mistake. Democrats cannot stop the subversion of 2024 election results alone, particularly if Democrats do not control many statehouses and either house of Congress when Electoral College votes are counted on Jan. 6, 2025. Why believe that any legislation passed only by Democrats in 2022 would stop subversive Republican action in 2024? A coalition with the minority of Republicans willing to stand up for the rule of law is the best way to try to erect barriers to a stolen election in 2024, even if those Republicans do not stand with Democrats on voting rights or other issues. Remember it took Republican election officials, elected officials, and judges to stand up against an attempted coup in 2020.Other Republicans may find it in their self-interest to work with Democrats on anti-subversion legislation. Senator Minority Whip John Thune recently signaled that his party may support a revision of the Electoral Count Act, the old, arcane rules Congress uses to certify state Electoral College votes. While Mr. Trump unsuccessfully tried to get his Republican vice president, Mike Pence, to throw the election to him or at least into chaos, Republicans know it will be Democratic vice president Kamala Harris, not Mr. Pence, who will be presiding over the Congress’s certification of Electoral College votes in 2025. Perhaps there is room for bipartisan agreement to ensure both that vice presidents don’t go rogue and that state legislatures cannot simply submit alternative slates of electors if they are unsatisfied with the election results.Reaching bipartisan compromise against election subversion will not stop Democrats from fixing voting rights or partisan gerrymanders on their own — the fate of those bills depend not on Republicans but on Democrats convincing Senators Manchin and Sinema to modify the filibuster rules. Republicans should not try to hold anti-election subversion hostage to Democrats giving up their voting agenda.Second, because law alone won’t save American democracy, all sectors of society need to be mobilized in support of free and fair elections. It is not just political parties that matter for assuring free and fair elections. It all of civil society: business groups, civic and professional organizations, labor unions and religious organizations all can help protect fair elections and the rule of law. Think, for example, of Texas, which in 2021 passed a new restrictive voting law. It has been rightly attacked for making it harder for some people to vote. But business pressure most likely helped kill a provision in the original version of the bill that would have made it much easier for a state court judge to overturn the results of an election.Business groups also refused to contribute to those members of Congress who after the insurrection objected on spurious grounds to Pennsylvania’s Electoral College votes for Mr. Biden. According to reporting by Judd Legum, “since Jan. 6, corporate PAC contributions to Republican objectors have plummeted by nearly two-thirds.” But some businesses are giving again to the objectors. Customers need to continue to pressure business groups to hold the line.Civil society needs to oppose those who run for office or seek appointment to run elections while embracing Trump’s false claims of a stolen election. Loyalty to a person over election integrity should be disqualifying.Finally, mass, peaceful organizing and protests may be necessary in 2024 and 2025. What happens if a Democratic presidential candidate wins in, say, Wisconsin in 2024, according to a fair count of the vote, but the Wisconsin legislature stands ready to send in an alternative slate of electors for Mr. Trump or another Republican based on unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud or other irregularities? These gerrymandered legislators may not respond to entreaties from Democrats, but they are more likely to respond to widespread public protests made up of people of good faith from across the political spectrum. We need to start organizing for this possibility now.The same applies if Kevin McCarthy or another Republican speaker of the House appears willing to accept rogue slates of electors sent in by state legislators — or if Democrats try to pressure Kamala Harris into assuming unilateral power herself to resolve Electoral College disputes. The hope of collective action is that there remains enough sanity in the center and commitment to the rule of law to prevent actions that would lead to an actual usurpation of the will of the people.If the officially announced vote totals do not reflect the results of a fair election process, that should lead to nationwide peaceful protests and even general strikes.One could pessimistically say that the fact that we even need to have this conversation about fair elections and rule of law in the United States in the 21st century is depressing and shocking. One could simply retreat into complacency. Or one could see the threats this country faces as a reason to buck up and prepare for the battle for the soul of American democracy that may well lay ahead. If Republicans have embraced authoritarianism or have refused to confront it, and Democrats in Congress cannot or will not save us, we must save ourselves.Richard L. Hasen (@rickhasen) is a professor of law and political science at the University of California, Irvine, and the author of “Election Meltdown: Dirty Tricks, Distrust and the Threat to American Democracy” and the forthcoming “Cheap Speech: How Disinformation Poisons Our Politics — and How to Cure 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, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      ‘We Barely Qualify as a Democracy Anymore’: Democratic Voters Fear for America

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      This article is based on a focus group we held with Democratic voters about the events of Jan. 6, 2021, and the health of American democracy. You can also read the article about our Republican voter focus group on the same issues here. Patrick Healy, the deputy Opinion editor, expands on the takeaways from the focus groups and the intent behind them here in the Opinion Today newsletter.One year after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, a Times Opinion focus group of Democratic voters found them frustrated that President Trump’s inner circle had not been held accountable for what happened that day — but also empathetic toward some of the rioters and their frustrations with “the system.”You don’t hear much empathy between progressives and conservatives these days, but some of the nine Democrats were clearly angry about politics and power in America and felt that Republicans probably shared that anger as well. One focus group member said of Jan. 6, “I want future historians to remember that all of that happened because of the corrupt system that already existed.”This transcript of the discussion among the nine Democrats (along with our separate focus group of eight Republicans) are part of a new series of Opinion focus groups exploring Americans’ views on issues facing the country. The Democrats largely agreed about what happened on Jan. 6 (as opposed to the Republican focus group members), but they disagreed about whether the attack was surprising — and whether they should have seen it coming. Several feared even worse violence around the 2024 election.The most surprising thing to us was their shaky faith in the Democratic Party itself — and its ability to do anything either to stop Republicans from doing more violence or change the root problems with “the system.” Listening to both focus groups, you really understand that we live in a country that is at once so radical and so conservative, and that what unites the left and the right is a mistrust in people at the top. There was little enthusiasm among the Democrats for President Biden to run again in 2024 — and ditto for the Republicans and Mr. Trump.As is customary in focus groups, our role as moderators was not to argue with or fact-check the speakers. Two veteran focus group moderators, Margie Omero and Kristen Soltis Anderson, led the Democratic and Republican discussions respectively. (Times Opinion paid them for the work; they do similar work for political candidates, parties and special interest groups.)This transcript has been edited for length; an audio recording and video clips of the session are also below. As is common with focus groups, the speakers’ last names are not included.Margie Omero: What were some of the biggest things that happened in 2021?Scott W. (from North Carolina): The Capitol in January.Sue (from Kentucky): Definitely.Scott Z. (from Connecticut): Absolutely.Margie Omero: How many people have that on their list?[Six of the nine raise their hands.]Sue: I think Jan. 6 just because of America’s place in the world. But I think on a more national level, I think the mental health crisis that our country is facing.Katelyn (from Colorado): Everything is a crisis, a terrifying thing. Mental health, Jan. 6, all the different variants we had, the vaccinated vs. not vaccinated.Margie Omero: Sue, when you say a mental health crisis, what specifically are you talking about?Sue: I work with middle school and elementary students. Our biggest issue in my middle school is kids’ mental health and getting their parents to understand that it is a critical issue, and this is why they’re not performing to the level. But state government still wants those [standardized] test results, and they want to see advancement. So I think it puts a lot of pressure on the kids and their families.Scott Z.: I have granddaughters, and my 2-and-a-half-year-old doesn’t know a time in her life where she didn’t wear a mask. And how is that going to affect her as she grows?Margie Omero: Thanks, everybody, for that. I want to go back to our 2021 year in review. What’s the first word that comes to mind when I say “Jan. 6”?Scott Z.: How close we’re coming to the end of a real democracy.Lawrence (from Ohio): Shocking.Amanpreet (from California): A little disturbing.Harold (from Florida): Lawlessness.Tracy (from Missouri): Devastating. Some people went to work that day and did not return home.Katelyn: I would just call it infantile behavior.Scott Z.: My surprise is how predictable, in hindsight, it actually was.Harold: It didn’t surprise me at all. I mean, everything’s been escalating and growing. Rioting in the street. Lawlessness. It was just growing up to the Capitol being stormed. It’s going to be the White House next. I mean, the riots, and the whole thing with “police can’t be police” anymore.Democratic Focus Group on Jan. 6 and DemocracyMargie Omero: Has your view on what happened on Jan. 6 changed over the last year?Susan (from Texas): I’ve gained a more nuanced view of what led to that. So all of this stuff that’s happening — what Harold refers to as all the lawlessness. It’s an inevitable boiling point of flawed systems that were put into place and have only gotten worse over the years. And with all these flawed systems that are put into place, everybody’s got to find an enemy. And some people might realize that the true enemy is the system which keeps us all in a harsh place unless you’re the top of the top. But some people, they buy into these lies that they’re told by people in order to keep their power, such as, oh, it’s the immigrants coming in and stealing jobs. It’s the blue-haired liberals and all that. It’s like, no, that’s not who the enemy is. The enemy is the system that needs either a complete makeover or severe reform in order to protect the livelihoods of the people, not the rich who are just gonna run the planet into the ground and move on to the next one.Margie Omero: Susan, thank you for that explanation. OK, Patrick had a couple questions.Patrick Healy: I’m going to say some words, and I want to see a show of hands if you felt like this when you learned what was happening or had happened on Jan. 6 at the Capitol.The first word is angry.[Five people raise their hands.]Patrick Healy: Upset?[Four people raise their hands.]Patrick Healy: Ashamed?[Five people raise their hands.]Patrick Healy: Ambivalent?[No one raises their hands.]Patrick Healy: How important is Jan. 6 as a day now in American history? 9/11 is also a date that by itself connotes a specific terrible event. Or Pearl Harbor. How does it compare?Sue: Pearl Harbor and 9/11 tended to bring us together as a country. Jan. 6 was a time that I felt totally betrayed by someone in an elected office. No offense to you from The Times, but I felt very betrayed by the media. The media did not show us in those days immediately or shortly thereafter what truly happened to the men and women trying to guard the Capitol.Scott Z.: Jan. 6 was Americans attacking Americans. The Civil War might be a better analogy.Lawrence: Some people don’t even know what happened. It’s so interesting what makes the news on it. For instance, one of the guys that got — he was organic food only. The judge allowed him — and I’m like, how was this news? That was making the news as opposed to — people are getting sentenced.Margie Omero: In the run-up to Jan. 6, what were the events that made it happen?Tracy: I think it was the frustration of the American people. I’m not saying it was right, but I believe it was more of the American people fed up. People are fed up with politics, telling you lies, and this, that, and the other. They stormed the Capitol for different reasons. But it was mainly the frustration of the American people. I’ve been to the Capitol. I marched on Medicaid. So yeah, people are frustrated, you know what I’m saying? And they took it — they took it way too far. It was like, what are y’all doing? And then, this is the choices that we have?Amanpreet: They just wanted their frustration to be heard out to everyone. But that was not the right way.Margie Omero: What were they frustrated about?Amanpreet: Well, the system. They don’t want Biden. They don’t want immigrants to come into their country to get their jobs. They want America to be American. But they don’t know America is, again, a country of immigrants.Margie Omero: Was there something that Donald Trump could have done differently to have prevented Jan. 6 from happening?Harold: He said, fight. He said, fight. Now — please forgive me — I love Donald Trump. I voted for Donald Trump. He’s successful, and I wanted to see him be successful in office. But that, I did not like. I do believe he sort of incited that. I think it’s a stupid mistake people made by listening to it.Margie Omero: How do you think Vice President Mike Pence handled everything that happened on Jan. 6?Sue: Well, I think the man had to be legitimately afraid when they had a gallows hanging out on the front lawn. I can’t imagine how he must have — betrayed he must have felt.Scott Z.: I think he acted better than I would have expected or hoped. I think he did an honorable job.Patrick Healy: How seriously do you think the 2020 election was in danger of being overturned on Jan. 6 at the time when Pence allowed the certification to go on?Sue: Very much so. If that election hadn’t been certified, where would we be as a nation, especially in the view of the rest of the world? So as much as it pains me, I respect him greatly for that moment in time.Lawrence: I didn’t really have much thought on it. I guess I just had come home from the gym, and I turned on the TV, and I started watching it. And then, after, like, six hours, I was like, all right, this is enough. It’s dark now. I didn’t put much thought into it till the next day. And then, I’m like, oh, they’ve certified everything.Margie Omero: What do you think, if anything, has changed? Is there something that’s changed in the country as a result of Jan. 6?Tracy: No.Scott W.: I’m actually fearful that somebody could go and break into a government building, and threaten harm on people, and not have ramifications.Harold: It’s not going to be the Capitol next time. It’s going to be the president’s bedroom. It’s going to be —Tracy: Yeah.[Several people nod their heads in agreement.]Susan: It’s set a dangerous precedent.Scott Z.: I actually think there were consequences for the people that have been sentenced. My concern is there are no consequences for the politicians. One of the videos, there was a congressman from, I think, Alabama, Mo Brooks — let’s take names and kick ass. And now, instead of him losing an election for the House of Representatives, he’s running for the Senate. He’s looking for a promotion. And they’re gonna elect him. So to me, there’s no consequences for the politicians on either side.Harold: You’re right, you’re right.Margie Omero: What have you heard about investigations into Jan. 6?Sue: Ignoring subpoenas, which — I do not understand why we have not hauled them out of their homes with their hands cuffed behind their back, like they would me if I ignored a subpoena.Tracy: Absolutely.Lawrence: I agree. We learn by example. And here are our elected officials, and they’re not being held to the same standards as we would be. So it’s like, wait a minute! And they’re going to stay working? How is this possible?Sue: I think it’s really shaken a lot of people on both sides of the political fence. For those people I know that will admit to supporting Trump even after the 6th, they’re even stunned that these people do not have to follow the law. I also feel like we need to hold Democrats [accountable] that pull shenanigans. We have laws in this country, and we are held — as common people — to those laws. And a certain behavior is expected of us. It’s like, these are supposedly intellectual, influential, affluent members of our society that should know what the law is, and I just can’t grasp why they’re not held accountable, both by the law and their constituents, and how impotent we felt to make a change in that. There was so little, as a constituent, that I could do. In the 2024 elections, we better buckle our seatbelts, because I think it has the potential to be really, really ugly.Katelyn: Mm-hmm.Margie Omero: The committee that we’re talking about, the investigation into Jan. 6 — how important is that compared to the other things that are going on in Congress, the other things that Congress should be and is working on?Susan: The pandemic, the climate crisis, the water crisis — all of that, I think, should be higher up than the insurrection.Scott Z.: I’m more concerned about why I can’t buy a home test kit. I mean, we’re the greatest nation in the world, and I can’t get the PCR test for two weeks.Sue: Or if you can get one, you can’t afford it.Margie Omero: We’re going to zoom out a little bit and talk about our democracy. Think about our democracy as if it’s a patient at a hospital or at the doctor. How would you characterize the health of our democracy? Healthy? Fair condition? Poor? Or in critical condition?Sue: In the I.C.U.Harold: It’s in a pandemic.Tracy: Critical condition.Susan: Critical condition, poisoned.Scott Z.: Poor. But the life will be saved.Amanpreet: The 2024 election — I kind of worry about that time. And I feel if Donald Trump is going to [run] again, things are going to get worse. It doesn’t have to be the Capitol all the time. It could be another place. People just need a leader who says things, who encourages them to do these kind of things. I think it’s in very critical condition. I would be scared to go out and vote at that time.Margie Omero: How do you think our democracy works now compared to a few decades ago? Would you say it’s better, or worse, or the same?Scott Z.: Worse.Scott W.: Worse.Tracy: I say worse.Margie Omero: How long has that been true? Is that just a recent thing?Susan: I actually think it’s been progressively or slowly getting worse. Twenty or 30 years or so, is when it’s really started to exponentially get worse. But the system was kind of — the way it was set up, I get that it was what worked at the time. But the way that it’s been upheld, and —Tracy: It’s not working now.Susan: We barely qualify as a democracy anymore.Sue: I think that the control of the lobbyists and the lobbyist interests —Susan: The lobbyists —Sue: — are truly what run this country, as opposed to our politicians.Margie Omero: I’ve heard a couple of people talk about “the system.” Is it, like, the system in place that people feel is problematic? Or, are there bad actors within our system?Susan: Both.Tracy: It’s the system. It’s the agenda that has been set up and been set forward. And the people just continue to go by the agenda.Sue: I think the bad actors that you’re talking about.Sue: So they pass an agenda to keep themselves in place.Margie Omero: How concerned are people about the next election — the 2022 election midterms, the 2024 elections further on — about the results of those elections reflecting the true will of the people?Susan: I don’t think they have for a while. I think the Electoral College needs to be done away with. Because it says that certain people’s votes are worth more than others.Amanpreet: I agree with that.Scott Z.: I’m concerned about people being allowed to vote and not having their voice be heard.Patrick Healy: Is there anything you want to see Biden and the Democratic Congress do to help democracy? Or is the system the system, and there’s not much they can do?Scott Z.: Reinstate the Voting Rights Act.Tracy: Rewrite the Constitution that set up laws 1,000 years old.Sue: I think it’s some of those amendments to the Constitution.Susan: Term limits.Sue: Our lobbyists are truly too influential with our legislature.Scott Z.: Why should Wyoming have the same number of senators as New York, you know?Patrick Healy: And just two show of hand questions. Who among you voted for President Biden in 2020?[Seven people raise their hands.]Patrick Healy: And then, how many of you want President Biden to run again for re-election in 2024?[One person raises her hand; three others rock their hands to gesture ambivalence.]Scott Z.: What are the options? I mean —Sue: Yeah. I mean, that’s where I’m at.Susan: Yeah, who’s the alternative?Margie Omero: OK, one last question. It’s probably the case that 100 years from now, historians will write about Jan. 6, 2021 as a moment in American history. What would you want those historians to know?Lawrence: Just a divisive nation with a lot of false things going on.Katelyn: I would just like the truth to be shown. Because I know there’s questions on what gets shown in textbooks for kids today. And things like the Holocaust are being questioned, which is absolutely ridiculous. So I just want the actual truth.Scott W.: I would hope that the attention goes to the victims and not the people who did the violence.Amanpreet: If you don’t have control, if you don’t have proper policies, this is going to happen every time, or every voting time. I don’t think it’s going to be history if Donald Trump is going to stand up in 2024. I feel it’s going to happen again.Harold: They concentrate more on the victims, and not the instigators and the lawlessness, yeah.Tracy: I want the truth to be told about the now and the then. What can the American people do to change it? Because we’ve got to do something. Or, like Harold said, it’s just a matter of time before another devastating occurrence occurs.Scott Z.: How close we’ve come to losing democracy.Sue: Democracy stood strong.Susan: I want future historians to remember that all of that happened because of the corrupt system that already existed. It was a response to a real problem. Even if they couldn’t identify the true source. More

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      Why Republican Voters Think Americans Have to Get Over Jan. 6

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      This article is the result of a focus group we held with Republican voters about the events of Jan. 6, 2021, and the health of American democracy. You can also read the article about our Democratic voter focus group on the same issues here. Patrick Healy, the deputy Opinion editor, expands on the takeaways from the focus groups and the intent behind them here in the Opinion Today newsletter.Former President Donald Trump may be popular in the Republican Party, but his conduct during the attack on the Capitol last Jan. 6 earned poor marks and stood out as a troubling memory during a discussion among eight G.O.P. voters in a Times Opinion focus group this week.This transcript of the discussion — part of a new series of Opinion focus groups exploring Americans’ views on issues facing the country — offers a more nuanced portrait of Republican voters and their concerns about American democracy than the typical image of the pro-Trump party base in lock step with the former president. The Times convened this focus group, as well as a separate focus group with Democrats, to pose the same questions in hopes of showing how different voters see the events of last year and where they disagree or overlap.Some of the Republicans said Mr. Trump could have stopped the attack on Jan. 6 sooner and others blamed him for egging on his supporters. At the same time, several of the Republicans repeated Mr. Trump’s falsehoods about election fraud and traded in other unfounded claims, including about the Jan. 6 riot, news coverage and a Democratic push for Covid-related restrictions to supposedly ensure more mail-in balloting in future elections.As is customary in focus groups, our role as moderators was not to argue with or fact-check the speakers. Listening to some of the Republicans rationalize their support for the president, and in some cases justify the mob violence at the Capitol, may offer insights into what makes them vote the way they do, and believe what they believe. It’s only by understanding that can we move toward a better, clearer understanding of our fellow citizens.Two veteran focus group moderators, Kristen Soltis Anderson and Margie Omero, led the Republican and Democratic discussions respectively. (Times Opinion paid them for the work; they do similar work for political candidates, parties and special interest groups.)This transcript has been edited for length; an audio recording and video clips of the session are also included. As is common with focus groups, the speakers’ last names are not included.Kristen Soltis Anderson: What are some of the biggest things that you remember happening in 2021?Gayle (from Florida): The vaccine. More and more people getting vaccinated.Judi (from Oklahoma): The economy started to go bad.Barney (from Delaware): The price of everything going up, and we’re back to $50 fill-ups.Matt (from Tennessee): Betty White was the final thing that 2021 was able to take from us.Lorna (from Missouri): A lot of the concerts were canceled. They managed to pull off the Rolling Stones coming here, though. I didn’t go. I didn’t want to be around all them people.Joshua (from Ohio): The social justice movement growing from 2020, definitely.Judi: The great divide our country is in. With our new president and with issues with the vaccine. There are people that are all for it. There are some that will not even talk about it or take it, even look at it.Sandy (from California): The vaccinations — you have to show your card. It’s almost like we’re having our civil rights taken away.Kristen Soltis Anderson: When I say “Jan. 6,” I want to hear from each of you what the first word is that comes to mind.Barney: Way overblown.Judi: Scary.Joshua: Misrepresented.Lorna: One of the guys that was arrested, my mom worked with. It’s ridiculous the way they came out and searched his house.Gayle: Definitely Trump and MAGA and CNN.Sandy: Blowing out of proportion.Kristen Soltis Anderson: In your own words, what happened on Jan. 6? How would you describe what happened?Matt: I would say civilians stormed the Capitol building in an unwarranted fashion.Gayle: Many people that were upset with how the election turned out and didn’t feel that Biden won fairly and wanted to, I guess, do some damage.Jill (from Maine): People trying to take control because they felt like somehow they were wronged with the election.Kristen Soltis Anderson: I want you to think about how you felt when you first heard about what had happened on Jan. 6, how you felt. A show of hands, did anybody feel angry?[Matt and Jill raise their hands.]Kristen Soltis Anderson: What about upset?[Jill, Matt, Lorna, Judi and Barney raise their hands.]Kristen Soltis Anderson: What about ashamed?[No one raises a hand.]Kristen Soltis Anderson: Ambivalent?[Gayle raises her hand.]Gayle: I kind of feel like, on one hand, you had a few bad apples in there, and then you had other people who truly were just trying to express their feelings of the election, and they didn’t feel that the outcome was right. So I don’t know what the intent was initially.Republican Focus Group on Jan. 6 and DemocracyPatrick Healy: How important do you think Jan. 6 was in American history? Just thinking about other major events in American history, Sept. 11, Pearl Harbor.Jill: I think it’s very important, and it’s much different than the other Pearl Harbors and stuff because it was Americans turning on Americans. It wasn’t somebody else doing damage. It was us doing damage to ourselves.Sandy: It doesn’t really faze me. I mean, these Black Lives Matter people back in 2020 — that was the whole summer. You don’t hear anybody talking about that.Kristen Soltis Anderson: Barney, I believe when I was going around and asking people to give one word, I believe you said “overblown.” Where do you see something like Jan. 6 in the scope of American history?Barney: I’ve lived in Washington. And if you do like you’re supposed to do and get your permits and get security, there’s very peaceful demonstrations with millions of people, and nothing happens. And nobody listened to the warnings saying there’s people coming. So it’s not a Pearl Harbor. It’s not a 9/11. It’s Jan. 6, 2021, and it’s just another day. Every day, if you live in Washington, you turn on the news, you hear “Jan. 6” 100 times a day. And if you go out to Oklahoma, you don’t hear it. So it’s where you are and what you hearGayle: People don’t talk about it. The issues that we’re dealing with right now, it’s Covid and inflation and the supply chain issues. It doesn’t matter if you’re Democrat or Republican. So I don’t know if it’s something that might eventually be in history books.Kristen Soltis Anderson: Were there any things that anybody was saying or doing that made what happened on Jan. 6 more likely to occur the way it did?Judi: People were saying that the states wanted to recount the votes because they saw fraud.Jill: I would say Trump. Trump saying he lost the election, it was stolen from him, over and over and over again. And I think a lot of people were just getting very angry about it, feeling like the election was stolen.Joshua: Trump’s speeches and his Twitter.Kristen Soltis Anderson: I want to know if you think there’s anything that President Trump could have done or should have done to prevent the escalation and what happened on Jan. 6?Judi: I don’t think you should have had that rally with all the people, with all the protesters. I think he just got everybody more ticked off.Gayle: I think he could have stopped it earlier somehow. I remember watching it on TV and going, ‘What the hell is going on right now?’ And I was like, ‘Where is Trump during this?’ And that was the only thing that kind of came to mind in that moment, was Trump’s got to come in and do something about this. But he wasn’t, and that was a concern of mine.Kristen Soltis Anderson: Based on what you’ve heard and your impressions of President Trump, what do you think was going through his mind when he was seeing all of this on television?Barney: He wasn’t very happy. For sure. Because Trump’s people don’t act like that. A lot of these people were professional antagonists. I’ve lived in D.C. my whole life. They like to do it.Sandy: People coming in there and storming and causing a ruckus didn’t achieve his goal.Judi: His followers were not like that.Kristen Soltis Anderson: I want to show you — this is a text from Donald Trump Jr. when he was texting with chief of staff Mark Meadows, where he said: “He’s got to condemn this ASAP. Capitol Police tweet is not enough.” Laura Ingraham: “Mark, the president needs to tell the people in the Capitol to go home. This is hurting all of us. He’s destroying his legacy.” Sean Hannity texting about this as well. Does this surprise you at all or not so much?Gayle: That is very surprising to me because they’re saying what you would think almost a Democrat would say or a liberal would say.Lorna: Kind of shocking to me. You’d think they’d back the president.Kristen Soltis Anderson: How do you think Vice President Mike Pence handled everything on Jan. 6? Is there anything that you wish the vice president had said or done differently that day?Sandy: I think he could have postponed the verification of the votes. To this day, there’s still recounts going on.Judi: No, I think he was stuck in the middle. I think he didn’t want to make waves, and I think he really didn’t have a choice.Gayle: He was stuck. I’m sort of stuck, myself, in thinking maybe he could have done more. But I don’t know what else he could have done other than to back Trump up.Patrick Healy: A show-of-hands question: How many of you believe Joe Biden won the election fair and square?[Jill raises her hand.]Patrick Healy: And how many of you believe Trump really won the election?[All but Jill and Matt raise their hands.]Patrick Healy: Judi, you made a point at the beginning about your concern about the great political divide in the country. Do you think that Jan. 6 contributed to that political divide, or do you think other factors contribute to that divide?Judi: I think it has a lot to do with the divide. Because there’s people like us. We feel that Trump should have won. Trump won the election. And there are others that will say no, Biden won fair and square. And that’s what’s dividing this country between the Republicans and the Democrats. I mean, even more so. I mean, really, really dividing us.Gayle: I think the country has been divided especially since Trump went into office in 2016. It didn’t matter about his policies anymore. It just had to do with his personality that people hated so much. I never heard of it in such an extreme manner than I did — until 2016 — throughout his presidency. And I’ll be quite frank with you. I don’t think he should run again. It’s a mistake for him to run. If he runs, every Democrat is going to just vote Democrat just to not keep Trump in.Patrick Healy: Can I ask for a show of hands: How many of you would like to see President Trump run again in 2024?[Judi, Joshua and Lorna raise their hands.]Joshua: Under Trump, for most of his term — having our economy be great. Getting back to that.Patrick Healy: Barney, could I ask you why you didn’t raise your hand?Barney: His show’s over. We definitely need some new blood at the head of the country and different types of leaders. I mean, this divide among the parties is getting really crazy, crazy. And living where I do, I mean, it’s just every day. And I used to think it was really bad when George Bush II was president. I mean, no matter what he did, he got criticized. If you got a flat tire, it was Bush’s fault. Trump, no matter what, he couldn’t do anything. The Washington Post food critic, because [Trump] likes his steak well done, criticized him for that. What he likes.Patrick Healy: How many of you voted for President Trump in 2020?[Six raise their hands; Joshua and Jill do not.]Kristen Soltis Anderson: In the days that followed Jan. 6, a number of prominent Republicans came out and said they were upset with what had happened and that they were upset with the way Trump had handled the situation. You had Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy say, “The president bears responsibility for Wednesday’s attack on Congress by mob rioters.” You had some members of the White House staff and some members of President Trump’s cabinet who resigned in protest. Why do you think they came out and said that?Matt: Absolutely save face with their constituency.Judi: I don’t think they were honest, and I think they should have backed him regardless. I mean, you’re Republican or Democrat. You should back your president, and they didn’t. They didn’t back him. And that’s why I’m kind of — I’m going independent now.Barney: Politicians don’t do anything unless it’s for their own best interests. They don’t do it for you or me. They do it for them. So they’re always covering their butt all the time.Kristen Soltis Anderson: I think, Barney, you may have mentioned people coming in from other places. Who is antifa? Where are they coming in from, in your view?Barney: I think there’s groups around the country that just — they’re professional hell-raisers, and they like to poke the bear. And they’re funded by, maybe, other countries. I’m not sure. I don’t know. Or maybe by Soros. But they’re always there, and they’re always in front.Gayle: From what I understand, a lot of them are on college campuses, and they recruit that way. So they’re recruiting young folks, people that are new to — are very open-minded, and maybe they’re just looking for some sort of community, some sort of group that they can be a part of.Kristen Soltis Anderson: I want to take a step back. How would you characterize the health of our democracy? Healthy? Fair? Poor? Critical condition? I want to get a show of hands. How many of you think our democracy is “mostly healthy”?[Sandy raises his hand.]Sandy: Shake it off. Things happen in life. Quit being a wuss.Kristen Soltis Anderson: Any hands for “fair” condition?[Barney and Jill raise their hands.]Barney: You can make a lot of things happen, if you have the right influence and the right amount of cash. I don’t think it’s good, but the way our country was set up is not like it is today. We’ve gone way, way, away from that.Jill: I think the basic theme is still there. I think people are still good, whether Republican or Democrat, and they’re still looking to work towards the good. They want to make things better.Kristen Soltis Anderson: How many of you would say you think our democracy is in “poor” condition?[Five raise their hands.]Gayle: We still have rules and laws that we have to abide by. However, we do have freedom of speech, although sometimes I don’t know about that anymore.Judi: So far.Gayle: So far. Who knows? It’s more about the mandates and the lockdowns and these requirements that the federal government is now making us do, as opposed to giving more of that freedom back to the people or to the states. To me, democracy was based on having the constituents make decisions. It’s not about the federal government taking over and controlling everything. That’s why you see a lot of people now leaving their jobs, because they don’t want to get the vaccine, and yet they’re mandated to do it. So it’s a problem. I’m very happy and very fortunate to be living in Florida, by the way, because I didn’t go through a lot of these mandates and lockdowns that were required.Joshua: I would say that the government looks for events like Covid-19 as ways to usher in the “New World Order” and just have everything be more socialist.Patrick Healy: I want to ask specifically about the next presidential election, the 2024 presidential election. Are you concerned at all about the losing party, whether it’s Republicans or Democrats, trying to steal the election after the fact?Barney: I think every election from now on is going to be like that.Lorna: They’re already talking about the mail-in ballots with Covid. You know where that’s going to go.Sandy: Yeah. It’s like they’re coming up with these — the right to vote thing. I’ve never been turned down to vote. Just show up and go vote. But this whole mail-in ballot thing? I think that should end right away.Gayle: I’ll be quite frank: I think that the reason that they push Covid so much is because they’re going to try to keep the mail-in ballots. I think that they are putting the fear in people so that they can push Covid as long as possible for 2024. It’s all about control, and they’re keeping Covid as one of their biggest weapons.Kristen Soltis Anderson: I have one final question. It’s probably the case that 100 years from now a historian is going to be writing a book about the 2020 election, and they’ll have a chapter on Jan. 6 and what happened. What would you want those historians, 100 years from now, to know about how you think about Jan. 6?Matt: They would hopefully write that the process still stood strong. It did what it was supposed to do. Regardless of whether or not it was tested — the process was still the process, and it didn’t need to be rewritten because of some hurt feelings.Joshua: About how the news was just trying to get out the story as fast as they could have and not worrying about the facts, just changing everything as they went on.Barney: I hope they include both sides of the story and all the players involved.Lorna: How the Democrats invaded the White House.Gayle: I guess it would come down to what is a fair election. People just didn’t feel that the election was fair. What is the proper way to vote, I think, is really what I would say to write about.Jill: It started off to be people expressing their opinion in a peaceful way, got out of hand, turned into a little bit of mob mentality, and things just got out of control in a way that normally wouldn’t happen.Sandy: Yeah. It was no Boston Tea Party, so I don’t think it’ll be a big event in a history book. But people stood up for what they thought. More

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      How Trump Kept Control of the G.O.P. After Jan. 6

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      Only weeks after instigating the Capitol riot, Donald Trump was back in command of the Republican Party.Hi. Welcome to On Politics, your guide to the political news in Washington and across the nation. We’re your hosts, Blake and Leah. Today, we have a guest item from our colleague Jeremy W. Peters, adapted from his forthcoming book, “Insurgency: How Republicans Lost Their Party and Got Everything They Ever Wanted.” It will be published on Feb. 8.‘But the people like me the best, by far’Six weeks after the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol, Donald Trump’s pollster, Tony Fabrizio, conducted a survey of Republicans that looked at how well liked the former president was among several distinct groups of voters within the party.It was the first time Fabrizio had done a detailed breakdown of the G.O.P. electorate since 2007, when he identified an emerging segment he called “Dennis Miller Republicans,” after the comedian who prides himself on being brash and politically incorrect. The growing sense of cultural isolation and anger among these Americans — conservatives, independents and former Democrats — shaped the contours of what would become the Trump movement.A veteran G.O.P. pollster who has worked on presidential campaigns going back to Patrick J. Buchanan’s first White House bid in 1992, Fabrizio saw how thoroughly Trump had remade the G.O.P. in his image — and how enduring his popularity remained, even after the attack on the seat of American democracy.The people who described themselves as the most committed Republicans were also the most likely to say they were committed to Trump, Fabrizio found in his post-Jan. 6 survey. Feelings about the former president, he explained in his analysis, were so intertwined with the understanding many voters had about what it meant to be a strong Republican that “Trumpism and party fidelity” were becoming one and the same.Trump hits bottomIn the immediate aftermath of Jan. 6, Trump’s enduring appeal was not so apparent. A Pew Research poll taken a few days after the attack showed his approval rating reaching the lowest point of his presidency — just 29 percent. Senior Republicans had spent the previous four years carefully avoiding direct conflict with Trump. Now, they felt a need to denounce him.Kevin McCarthy, the House G.O.P. leader, urged his colleagues to support a resolution to censure Trump for inciting the violence. And in a speech on Jan. 13, the day Trump was impeached for the second time, McCarthy was unambiguous about where he believed the blame fell. “The president bears responsibility for Wednesday’s attack on Congress by mob rioters,” he said.Even former Vice President Mike Pence, who on Jan. 6 was hustled out of the Senate chamber by Secret Service agents who were concerned he was a target, was angry enough to fume privately to a Republican senator, “After all the things I’ve done for him.”‘One day in January’The breach didn’t last long. And burying the memory of what happened on Jan. 6 — which Pence downplayed recently as “one day in January” — has become a necessity to maintaining power and relevance in today’s G.O.P.One year after that day in January, polls show that most Republicans see little need to re-examine — or even acknowledge — what happened. Around three-quarters of them still view Trump favorably, or roughly the same as when Fabrizio conducted his poll shortly after Jan. 6. And there is no surer sign that the Republican Party remains the party of Trump than the fact that there remains no obvious or able challenger to him in sight.McCarthy was among the first to change tack, visiting Trump’s Palm Beach estate in late January. After the two men posed for a photo, a Trump spokesperson released a statement announcing that the two men had agreed to work together to reclaim the House majority.“President Trump’s popularity has never been stronger than it is today, and his endorsement means more than perhaps any endorsement at any time,” the statement noted. McCarthy has since tried to derail the congressional commission investigating the attacks.No remorseNo one seems more intent on proving how damaging it is politically for a Republican to question Trump’s revisionist accounts of what happened in the 2020 election and on Jan. 6 than Trump himself.In an interview at Mar-a-Lago a few weeks after the attack, he suggested that Pence had jeopardized his political future by not heeding his demand to interfere with the counting of the Electoral College votes in Congress that day.“There was no downside,” Trump said. “So Mike could have done that. And I wish he did. I think it would have been much better for the country. I also think it would have been better for Mike.”He expressed little interest in discussing what harm might have befallen Pence, his beseechingly loyal lieutenant of four years, as rioters marauded through the halls of Congress calling for his execution. Their threats weren’t real, he insisted. “I think it was an expression. I don’t think they would have ever thought of doing it,” he said.As Republicans at first tried to dispel the idea that Trump’s dominance over the party would continue once he left office, many of them sounded like Senator Rick Scott of Florida, who said in a television interview a year ago that the G.O.P. belonged to no single person but to its voters — the people.Trump, however, offered a revealing clarification to Scott’s comment: “But the people like me the best, by far.”A former U.S. Capitol Police officer holding his inauguration badge.Philip Montgomery for The New York TimesWhat to read tonightFor The New York Times Magazine, Susan Dominus and Luke Broadwater interviewed more than 20 Capitol Police officers and their families about their emotional and physical scars after the Jan. 6 riot. Officers who have since left the department “said the failures of Jan. 6 were the most egregious of a series of management crises and errors.”Broadwater and Alan Feuer have written a preview of what the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 attacks is planning, and Broadwater explained what the panel can actually accomplish.Pro-Trump groups are raising money and holding events that “seem intended to reinforce the former president’s grip on the Republican Party and its donors,” Kenneth P. Vogel and Shane Goldmacher report.Time is running out for New York’s bipartisan redistricting commission to draw new congressional and state legislative maps, which makes it increasingly likely that Democratic supermajorities in the Legislature will have the final word instead, Nicholas Fandos writes.The New York Times asked parents about child care during the pandemic, and Maggie Astor shared a handful of responses.reply allWhat you want to knowWe asked what you wanted to read in 2022, and readers of On Politics certainly delivered.Our inbox was full of your questions about voting access and your personal experiences with the pandemic, not to mention requests to learn more about individual political figures and international politics.We’ve bookmarked these ideas for future newsletters, but in the meantime we noted a real sense of anxiety about polarization and the survival of democratic institutions. A few examples below:“How do we fix this? Did folks in 1850 ask the same question? How do you stop a tidal wave? And yet there is still drivers ed and wrestling tournaments and Xmas and college applications and the new iPhone.” — Amy Vansen, Michigan“We’ve lived through a lot of political crises but this is one mess we would hope not to leave behind for our children and grandchildren to deal with.” — Jaime McBrady, Medellín, Colombia“When I read in today’s story ‘just as election season begins in earnest,’ I cursed. I am very tired of hearing everything related to the election prospects of the parties so far ahead of the event.” — Keith Johnson, SeattleOne more thing…Senator Tim Kaine, a Virginia Democrat who lives in Richmond, was among hundreds of drivers stranded in traffic on I-95 after an unusually severe winter storm hit the Washington, D.C. area.Key Figures in the Jan. 6 InquiryCard 1 of 10The House investigation. More

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      Trump Found Crucial Support in Congress as He Fought to Stay in Power

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      WASHINGTON — Two days after Christmas last year, Richard P. Donoghue, a top Justice Department official in the waning days of the Trump administration, saw an unknown number appear on his phone.Mr. Donoghue had spent weeks fielding calls, emails and in-person requests from President Donald J. Trump and his allies, all of whom asked the Justice Department to declare, falsely, that the election was corrupt. The lame-duck president had surrounded himself with a crew of unscrupulous lawyers, conspiracy theorists, even the chief executive of MyPillow — and they were stoking his election lies.Mr. Trump had been handing out Mr. Donoghue’s cellphone number so that people could pass on rumors of election fraud. Who could be calling him now?It turned out to be a member of Congress: Representative Scott Perry, Republican of Pennsylvania, who began pressing the president’s case. Mr. Perry said he had compiled a dossier of voter fraud allegations that the department needed to vet. Jeffrey Clark, a Justice Department lawyer who had found favor with Mr. Trump, could “do something” about the president’s claims, Mr. Perry said, even if others in the department would not.The message was delivered by an obscure lawmaker who was doing Mr. Trump’s bidding. Justice Department officials viewed it as outrageous political pressure from a White House that had become consumed by conspiracy theories.It was also one example of how a half-dozen right-wing members of Congress became key foot soldiers in Mr. Trump’s effort to overturn the election, according to dozens of interviews and a review of hundreds of pages of congressional testimony about the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6.Representatives Jim Jordan of Ohio, left, and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania at a rally in Harrisburg, Pa., two days after the 2020 election.Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesThe lawmakers — all of them members of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus — worked closely with the White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, whose central role in Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn a democratic election is coming into focus as the congressional investigation into Jan. 6 gains traction.The men were not alone in their efforts — most Republican lawmakers fell in line behind Mr. Trump’s false claims of fraud, at least rhetorically — but this circle moved well beyond words and into action. They bombarded the Justice Department with dubious claims of voting irregularities. They pressured members of state legislatures to conduct audits that would cast doubt on the election results. They plotted to disrupt the certification on Jan. 6 of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory.There was Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, the pugnacious former wrestler who bolstered his national profile by defending Mr. Trump on cable television; Representative Andy Biggs of Arizona, whose political ascent was padded by a $10 million sweepstakes win; and Representative Paul Gosar, an Arizona dentist who trafficked in conspiracy theories, spoke at a white nationalist rally and posted an animated video that depicted him killing Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York.Representatives Paul Gosar of Arizona, left, and Louie Gohmert of Texas spoke at a news conference this month expressing concerns about the treatment of those who had stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6.T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York TimesThey were joined by Representative Louie Gohmert of Texas, who was known for fiery speeches delivered to an empty House chamber and unsuccessfully sued Vice President Mike Pence over his refusal to interfere in the election certification; and Representative Mo Brooks of Alabama, a lawyer who rode the Tea Party wave to Congress and was later sued by a Democratic congressman for inciting the Jan. 6 riot.Mr. Perry, a former Army helicopter pilot who is close to Mr. Jordan and Mr. Meadows, acted as a de facto sergeant. He coordinated many of the efforts to keep Mr. Trump in office, including a plan to replace the acting attorney general with a more compliant official. His colleagues call him General Perry.Mr. Meadows, a former congressman from North Carolina who co-founded the Freedom Caucus in 2015, knew the six lawmakers well. His role as Mr. Trump’s right-hand man helped to remarkably empower the group in the president’s final, chaotic weeks in office.In his book, “The Chief’s Chief,” Mr. Meadows insisted that he and Mr. Trump were simply trying to unfurl serious claims of election fraud. “All he wanted was time to get to the bottom of what really happened and get a fair count,” Mr. Meadows wrote.Congressional Republicans have fought the Jan. 6 committee’s investigation at every turn, but it is increasingly clear that Mr. Trump relied on the lawmakers to help his attempts to retain power. When Justice Department officials said they could not find evidence of widespread fraud, Mr. Trump was unconcerned: “Just say that the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me and the R. Congressmen,” he said, according to Mr. Donoghue’s notes of the call.Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, promoted several conspiracy theories as he fought the electoral process.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesNovemberOn Nov. 9, two days after The Associated Press called the race for Mr. Biden, crisis meetings were underway at Trump campaign headquarters in Arlington, Va.Understand the U.S. Capitol RiotOn Jan. 6, 2021, a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol.What Happened: Here’s the most complete picture to date of what happened — and why.Timeline of Jan. 6: A presidential rally turned into a Capitol rampage in a critical two-hour time period. Here’s how.Key Takeaways: Here are some of the major revelations from The Times’s riot footage analysis.Death Toll: Five people died in the riot. Here’s what we know about them.Decoding the Riot Iconography: What do the symbols, slogans and images on display during the violence really mean?Mr. Perry and Mr. Jordan huddled with senior White House officials, including Mr. Meadows; Stephen Miller, a top Trump adviser; Bill Stepien, the campaign manager; and Kayleigh McEnany, the White House press secretary.According to two people familiar with the meetings, which have not been previously reported, the group settled on a strategy that would become a blueprint for Mr. Trump’s supporters in Congress: Hammer home the idea that the election was tainted, announce legal actions being taken by the campaign, and bolster the case with allegations of fraud.At a news conference later that day, Ms. McEnany delivered the message.“This election is not over,” she said. “Far from it.”Mr. Jordan’s spokesman said that the meeting was to discuss media strategy, not to overturn the election.On cable television and radio shows and at rallies, the lawmakers used unproved fraud claims to promote the idea that the election had been stolen. Mr. Brooks said he would never vote to certify Mr. Trump’s loss. Mr. Jordan told Fox News that ballots were counted in Pennsylvania after the election, contrary to state law. Mr. Gohmert claimed in Philadelphia that there was “rampant” voter fraud and later said on YouTube that the U.S. military had seized computer servers in Germany used to flip American votes.Mr. Gosar pressed Doug Ducey, the Republican governor of Arizona, to investigate voting equipment made by Dominion Voting Systems, a company at the heart of several false conspiracy theories that Mr. Trump and his allies spread.Mr. Trump’s supporters protested at the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office in Phoenix as ballots were being counted in November 2020.Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York TimesMr. Gosar embraced the fraud claims so closely that his chief of staff, Tom Van Flein, rushed to an airplane hangar parking lot in Phoenix after a conspiracy theory began circulating that a suspicious jet carrying ballots from South Korea was about to land, perhaps in a bid to steal the election from Mr. Trump, according to court documents filed by one of the participants. The claim turned out to be baseless.Mr. Van Flein did not respond to detailed questions about the episode.Even as the fraud claims grew increasingly outlandish, Attorney General William P. Barr authorized federal prosecutors to look into “substantial allegations” of voting irregularities. Critics inside and outside the Justice Department slammed the move, saying it went against years of the department’s norms and chipped away at its credibility. But Mr. Barr privately told advisers that ignoring the allegations — no matter how implausible — would undermine faith in the election, according to Mr. Donoghue’s testimony.And in any event, administration officials and lawmakers believed the claims would have little effect on the peaceful transfer of power to Mr. Biden from Mr. Trump, according to multiple former officials.Mainstream Republicans like Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, said on Nov. 9 that Mr. Trump had a right to investigate allegations of irregularities, “A few legal inquiries from the president do not exactly spell the end of the Republic,” Mr. McConnell said.Mr. Gohmert unsuccessfully sued Vice President Mike Pence, center, in an attempt to force him to nullify the election results.Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesDecemberOn Dec. 1, 2020, Mr. Barr said publicly what he knew to be true: The Justice Department had found no evidence of widespread election fraud. Mr. Biden was the lawful winner.The attorney general’s declaration seemed only to energize the six lawmakers. Mr. Gohmert suggested that the F.B.I. in Washington could not be trusted to investigate election fraud. Mr. Biggs said that Mr. Trump’s allies needed “the imprimatur, quite frankly of the D.O.J.,” to win their lawsuits claiming fraud.They turned their attention to Jan. 6, when Mr. Pence was to officially certify Mr. Biden’s victory. Mr. Jordan, asked if the president should concede, replied, “No way.”The lawmakers started drumming up support to derail the transfer of power.Mr. Gohmert sued Mr. Pence in an attempt to force him to nullify the results of the election. Mr. Perry circulated a letter written by Pennsylvania state legislators to Mr. McConnell and Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the House Republican leader, asking Congress to delay certification. “I’m obliged to concur,” Mr. Perry wrote.Mr. Meadows remained the key leader. When disputes broke out among organizers of the pro-Trump “Stop the Steal” rallies, he stepped in to mediate, according to two organizers, Dustin Stockton and Jennifer Lynn Lawrence.In one case, Mr. Meadows helped settle a feud about whether to have one or two rallies on Jan. 6. The organizers decided that Mr. Trump would make what amounted to an opening statement about election fraud during his speech at the Ellipse, then the lawmakers would rise in succession during the congressional proceeding and present evidence they had gathered of purported fraud.(That plan was ultimately derailed by the attack on Congress, Mr. Stockton said.)Mr. Trump at the rally outside the White House on Jan. 6. “We fight like hell, and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore,” he told his supporters.Pete Marovich for The New York TimesOn Dec. 21, Mr. Trump met with members of the Freedom Caucus to discuss their plans. Mr. Jordan, Mr. Gosar, Mr. Biggs, Mr. Brooks and Mr. Meadows were there.“This sedition will be stopped,” Mr. Gosar wrote on Twitter.Asked about such meetings, Mr. Gosar’s chief of staff said the congressman and his colleagues “have and had every right to attend rallies and speeches.”“None of the members could have anticipated what occurred (on Jan. 6),” Mr. Van Flein added.Mr. Perry was finding ways to exert pressure on the Justice Department. He introduced Mr. Trump to Mr. Clark, the acting head of the department’s civil division who became one of the Stop the Steal movement’s most ardent supporters.Then, after Christmas, Mr. Perry called Mr. Donoghue to share his voter fraud dossier, which focused on unfounded election fraud claims in Pennsylvania.“I had never heard of him before that day,” Mr. Donoghue would later testify to Senate investigators. He assumed that Mr. Trump had given Mr. Perry his personal cellphone number, as the president had done with others who were eager to pressure Justice Department officials to support the false idea of a rigged election.Key Aspects of the Jan. 6 InquiryCard 1 of 8The House investigation. More

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      Fearing a Repeat of Jan. 6, Congress Eyes Changes to Electoral Count Law

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      Members of the special House committee investigating the Capitol riot are among those arguing for an overhaul of a more than century-old statute enacted to address disputed elections.WASHINGTON — Members of the select congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack at the Capitol are pressing to overhaul the complex and little-known law that former President Donald J. Trump and his allies tried to use to overturn the 2020 election, arguing that the ambiguity of the statute puts democracy itself at risk.The push to rewrite the Electoral Count Act of 1887 — enacted more than a century ago in the wake of another bitterly disputed presidential election — has taken on new urgency in recent weeks as more details have emerged about the extent of Mr. Trump’s plot to exploit its provisions to cling to power.Mr. Trump and his allies, using a warped interpretation of the law, sought to persuade Vice President Mike Pence to throw out legitimate results when Congress met in a joint session on Jan. 6 to conduct its official count of electoral votes.It was Mr. Pence’s refusal to do so that led a mob of Mr. Trump’s supporters to chant “Hang Mike Pence,” as they stormed the Capitol, delaying the proceedings as lawmakers fled for their lives. Members of Congress and the vice president ultimately returned and completed the count, rejecting challenges made by loyalists to Mr. Trump and formalizing President Biden’s victory.But had Mr. Pence done as Mr. Trump wanted — or had enough members of Congress voted to sustain the challenges lodged by Mr. Trump’s supporters — the outcome could have been different.“We know that we came precariously close to a constitutional crisis, because of the confusion in many people’s minds that was obviously planted by the former president as to what the Congress’s role actually was,” said Zach Wamp, a former Republican congressman from Tennessee who is a co-chairman of the Reformers Caucus at Issue One, a bipartisan group that is pressing for changes to the election process.Republicans in Congress have repeatedly blocked efforts by Democrats to alter election laws in the wake of the 2020 crisis, and it is not clear whether a bid to revamp the Electoral Count Act will fare any better. But experts have described the law as “almost unintelligible,” and an overhaul has the support of several leading conservative groups..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-1g3vlj0{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1g3vlj0{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-1g3vlj0 strong{font-weight:600;}.css-1g3vlj0 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1g3vlj0{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}“There are a few of us on the committee who are working to identify proposed reforms that could earn support across the spectrum of liberal to conservative constitutional scholars,” said Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California and a member of the Jan. 6 committee. “We could very well have a problem in a future election that comes down to an interpretation of a very poorly written, ambiguous and confusing statute.”Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming and the vice chairwoman of the committee, said on Thursday that “the 1887 Electoral Count Act is directly at issue” and that the panel would recommend changes to it.The Constitution leaves it up to Congress to finalize the results of presidential elections shortly before Inauguration Day. Article II, Section 1 says, “The president of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates, and the votes shall then be counted.”Vice President Mike Pence presided over a joint session of Congress in January convened to formalize the Electoral College tally. Erin Schaff/The New York TimesBut the process is further detailed in the Electoral Count Act, which says that as lawmakers read through the electoral results of each state during a joint session of Congress, members of the House and Senate may submit objections in writing, which can be sustained if a majority of both chambers approves. In the event that a state submitted multiple slates to Congress, the governor’s certified electors would hold, the law says, unless a majority in both chambers voted to reject them.The statute was written in the aftermath of the disputed election of 1876 between Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and Democrat Samuel J. Tilden, and has dictated how Congress formalizes elections, mostly without incident, ever since.But what unfolded on Jan. 6 tested its limits.Both of the objections by Mr. Trump’s allies — who sought to invalidate the electoral votes of Pennsylvania and Arizona — failed in the House, although the vast majority of Republicans supported them. Yet in the months since, it has become clear those challenges were part of a broader strategy. John Eastman, a lawyer advising Mr. Trump, drafted a plan that included sending to Mr. Pence, who presided over the joint session in his role as president of the Senate, a slate of Trump electors from seven states won by Mr. Biden.Mr. Eastman and other allies of Mr. Trump suggested pressuring the vice president to accept the alternate slate of Trump electors, throwing out legitimate votes for Mr. Biden. Under such a scenario, Mr. Eastman argued, a vote of those states’ delegations in the House, favoring Republicans, could keep Mr. Trump in power. (Mr. Eastman this week informed the committee he planned to invoke his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination to avoid answering the committee’s questions.)“The antiquated law governing the Electoral College vote count is too vague and ripe for abuse, and it resulted in baseless objections that delayed the democratic process,” said Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota and the chairwoman of the Senate Rules Committee. “It’s time to update this law to safeguard our democracy.”Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, has indicated an openness to revising the statute, and a small group of senators, including Senator Angus King, independent of Maine, has been working on potential solutions.Understand the Claim of Executive Privilege in the Jan. 6. InquiryCard 1 of 8A key issue yet untested. More

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      John Eastman Blamed Pence for Violence at Jan. 6 Riot

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      John Eastman, the author of a memo that some in both parties liken to a blueprint for a coup, sent a hostile email to the vice president’s chief counsel as the mob attacked.WASHINGTON — As a mob was attacking the Capitol chanting “Hang Mike Pence,” a lawyer who plotted with President Donald J. Trump and his allies to try to overturn the 2020 election sent a hostile message to the vice president’s top lawyer, blaming Mr. Pence for the violence.The email, reported by The Washington Post and confirmed by a person briefed on its contents, shows the extent to which Mr. Trump and his advisers sought to pressure the vice president, who was presiding over the certification of the election, to defy the will of the voters and keep Mr. Trump in office.“The ‘siege’ is because YOU and your boss did not do what was necessary to allow this to be aired in a public way so that the American people can see for themselves what happened,” the lawyer, John Eastman, wrote to Greg Jacob, Mr. Pence’s chief counsel.Mr. Pence and Mr. Jacob were in a secure room at the Capitol when Mr. Eastman sent the message, The Post said. Outside, rioters were storming the building where Congress was meeting to certify Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s election, erecting a gallows, hunting for Speaker Nancy Pelosi and forcing lawmakers to evacuate in a scene of violence and mayhem. Police officers recovered guns, knives, Tasers, Molotov cocktails, explosive devices and zip ties in the area.Mr. Eastman rose within Mr. Trump’s legal circle in 2020 from a little-known conservative academic to one of the most influential voices in the president’s ear, writing a memo laying out steps he argued Mr. Pence could take to keep Mr. Trump in power — measures Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans have likened to a blueprint for a coup.The two-page memo written by Mr. Eastman and circulated to the White House in the days before the certification was revealed in the book “Peril” by the Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Robert Costa. In the memo, Mr. Eastman argued that as vice president, Mr. Pence was “the ultimate arbiter” of the election, essentially saying he had the power to determine who won, and that “we should take all of our actions with that in mind.”That view was rejected by Mr. Pence and his lawyers as illegal and unethical.Since his memo was made public, Mr. Eastman has sought to distance himself from its contents, arguing that the document was taken out of context. He told National Review that the strategy was not “viable” and would have been “crazy” to pursue.But the email to Mr. Jacob undercuts those comments. Mr. Jacob wrote in a draft opinion article that Mr. Eastman showed “a shocking lack of awareness” as “a band of thugs who had been sold the lie that the vice president had the power to reverse the outcome of the election” stormed the Capitol.“Vice President Pence rejected the spurious legal theories that were pitched to him, and he did his duty,” Mr. Jacob wrote. “An inquiry should be made into whether the president’s outside lawyers did theirs.”Through a spokesman, Mr. Eastman declined to comment.The liberal activist Lauren Windsor recently recorded Mr. Eastman calling Mr. Pence an “establishment guy” and standing by the contents of his memo. “These guys are spineless,” he said of lawmakers who refused to join his plan to overturn the election based on false claims of widespread voter fraud.Trump’s Bid to Subvert the ElectionCard 1 of 6A monthslong campaign. More