Storming of the US Capitol (Jan, 2021)

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      Trump Is Still a Threat

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      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

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      Pence Aide Warned Against Blocking Electoral College Count, Memo Shows

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      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

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

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      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

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      Donald Trump, American Monster

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      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

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

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      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

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      Jan. 6 Panel Puts Focus on Cabinet Discussions About Removing Trump

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      Other reports verify Representative Liz Cheney’s assertion that cabinet members considered using the 25th Amendment to oust Donald Trump after the assault on the Capitol.When Representative Liz Cheney asserted at the House Jan. 6 hearing on Thursday that Trump administration cabinet members weighed invoking the constitutional process to remove President Donald J. Trump from office after the attack on the Capitol by his supporters, she did not immediately provide details or evidence.But as the federal government convulsed in the hours and days after the deadly riot, a range of cabinet officials weighed their options, and consulted one another about how to steady the administration and ensure a peaceful transition to a new presidency.Mike Pompeo, the secretary of state at the time, and Steven Mnuchin, then the Treasury secretary, discussed the possibility of invoking the 25th Amendment, which would have required the vice president and the majority of the cabinet to agree that the president could no longer fulfill his duties to begin a complex process of removal from office.Their discussion was reported by Jonathan Karl of ABC News in his book “Betrayal,” and described to The New York Times by a person briefed on the discussion. Mr. Pompeo has denied the exchange took place, and Mr. Mnuchin has declined to comment.Betsy DeVos, Mr. Trump’s education secretary, told USA Today this week that she raised with Vice President Mike Pence whether the cabinet should consider the 25th Amendment. But Mr. Pence, she said, “made it very clear that he was not going to go in that direction.”She decided to resign. So did Matt Pottinger, the deputy national security adviser.Eugene Scalia, then the labor secretary, discussed with colleagues right after the attack the need to steady the administration, according to three people familiar with the conversations.Mr. Scalia called an aide to Mr. Pence, they said, to say that he was uncomfortable with Mr. Trump having the level of power that he did and that there needed to be more involvement from the cabinet. Mr. Pence’s team did not want to make such a move.Mr. Scalia also had a conversation with Mr. Pompeo, which Mr. Pompeo shared with multiple people, in which Mr. Scalia suggested that someone should talk to Mr. Trump about the need do something to restore confidence in the government and a peaceful transition of power. In Mr. Pompeo’s rendering of that conversation, disputed by others, Mr. Scalia also suggested that someone should talk to Mr. Trump about resigning.Mr. Pompeo replied sarcastically by asking how Mr. Scalia imagined that conversation with Mr. Trump would go.Eugene Scalia, the labor secretary, and Betsy DeVos, the education secretary, at the White House in 2020. Both questioned President Donald J. Trump’s fitness for office after the Jan. 6 attack.Jason Andrew for The New York TimesMr. Scalia and Mr. Pompeo, through an aide, declined to comment.The reference by Ms. Cheney, a Wyoming Republican and the vice chairwoman of the House Jan. 6 committee, to the 25th Amendment being under consideration by cabinet members was one of the most striking assertions in the panel’s two-hour hearing. In the first of six planned public hearings, the committee presented a detailed case against Mr. Trump and the rioters who stormed the Capitol and delayed the congressional certification of the Electoral College results.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. Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump: In videos shown during the hearing, Mr.Trump’s daughter and son-in-law were stripped of their carefully managed images.The panel has signaled that it plans to use the discussions about the 25th Amendment to show not only the chaos that Mr. Trump set off by helping stoke the riot but how little confidence those around him had in his ability to be president.“You will hear about members of the Trump cabinet discussing the possibility of invoking the 25th Amendment, and replacing the president of the United States,” Ms. Cheney said as she read her opening statement at the hearing. “Multiple members of President Trump’s own cabinet resigned immediately after Jan. 6.”In addition to Ms. DeVos, the transportation secretary, Elaine Chao — the wife of Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader — also resigned.At the hearing on Thursday, Ms. Cheney also asserted that Republican lawmakers who had been involved in helping Mr. Trump overturn the election sought pardons from the White House in the final days of the administration. The committee plans to use the pardon requests as evidence of how those who helped Mr. Trump had a consciousness of guilt about what they had done.Ms. Cheney did not provide any evidence to substantiate her assertion, and she named only one lawmaker, Representative Scott Perry, Republican of Pennsylvania, as a pardon seeker.In an email, Jay Ostrich, a spokesman for Mr. Perry, called the assertion “a ludicrous and soulless lie.”Ms. Cheney promised that she would reveal supporting evidence at upcoming hearings, and a person familiar with the committee’s investigation said the panel had received testimony about the pardon requests.Mr. Perry coordinated a plan to try to replace the acting attorney general, who was resisting Mr. Trump’s attempts to investigate baseless election-fraud reports, with a more compliant official. Mr. Perry also endorsed the idea of encouraging Mr. Trump’s supporters to march on the Capitol on Jan. 6.The committee’s next hearing is scheduled for Monday, where the panel plans to lay out how Mr. Trump and his allies stoked the “Big Lie” that the election had been stolen. Two more hearings are scheduled for next week — one on Wednesday about the attempt at the Justice Department to oust the acting attorney general, and another on Thursday about the pressure campaign on Mr. Pence to block or delay certification of the electoral vote count.Three former Justice Department officials have agreed to testify at the Wednesday hearing, according to a letter sent to the committee on Friday.The three witnesses — Jeffrey A. Rosen, who was the acting attorney general, Richard P. Donoghue, the acting deputy attorney general, and Steven A. Engel, the former head of the Office of Legal Counsel — all participated in a tense meeting just before the Jan. 6 attack, where Mr. Trump considered firing Mr. Rosen and installing a loyalist in his place.Even before Jan. 6, government officials under Mr. Trump had discussed invoking the 25th Amendment.In the spring of 2017, after Mr. Trump fired James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director, the deputy attorney general, Rod J. Rosenstein, rattled by Mr. Trump’s handling of the dismissal, raised the possibility of invoking the 25th Amendment in a meeting with senior Justice Department and F.B.I. officials.The acting F.B.I. director, Andrew G. McCabe, had opened a counterintelligence investigation into Mr. Trump’s ties to Russia and was pressing Mr. Rosenstein to appoint a special counsel. Mr. Rosenstein agreed that Mr. Trump’s possible ties to Russia should be investigated but said that if an inquiry uncovered troubling evidence of Mr. Trump’s ties to Russia, the only remedy would be to invoke the 25th Amendment.Mr. Rosenstein then said that he had done the math and believed there were at least six cabinet officials who would go along with invoking it, including Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly. Despite raising the possibility, the idea went nowhere and Mr. Rosenstein appointed Robert S. Mueller III to be the special counsel.In the years that followed, there were several disclosures about others who had discussed the possibility of invoking the amendment. In 2019, a book by an anonymous administration official recounted that senior White House officials believed that Mr. Pence would go along with invoking the amendment to oust Mr. Trump. Mr. Pence denied that claim.A veteran CBS News producer named Ira Rosen wrote in his 2021 book about his time working in the news business that Stephen K. Bannon, the White House chief strategist until August 2017, had spoken with him about the 25th Amendment.And Mark T. Esper, Mr. Trump’s final Senate-confirmed defense secretary, wrote in his recent book, “A Sacred Oath,” about the aftermath of an incident when Mr. Trump delivered a diatribe against the military during a meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the second half of his term.Mark T. Esper, the former defense secretary, wrote in his book that a military officer had told him of his concerns about Mr. Trump’s fitness for office and had researched the process of removing him.Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times“Months later, one of the officers present told me in a phone call that he went home that evening deeply concerned about what he had seen in his commander in chief,” Mr. Esper recounted, without identifying the person in question.“The next morning, he said in a very sober tone, he started reading up on the 25th Amendment and the role of the cabinet as a check on the president,” Mr. Esper said. “He wanted to understand ‘what the cabinet needed to consider’ and what the process was.”Mr. Esper said that in his own view, Mr. Trump’s behavior never rose to the standard required for invoking the 25th Amendment. But that was before the postelection period, by which time Mr. Esper had been fired by Mr. Trump.Two days after the Capitol riot, Speaker Nancy Pelosi spoke to Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs.“This is bad, but who knows what he might do?” Ms. Pelosi said, according to the book “Peril,” by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa. “He’s crazy. You know he’s crazy. He’s been crazy for a long time. So don’t say you don’t know what his state of mind is.”“Madam Speaker,” General Milley replied, “I agree with you on everything.”Luke Broadwater More

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      Tom Rice, G.O.P. Congressman Who Voted to Impeach Trump, Stands by His Vote

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      CONWAY, S.C. — Tom Rice, the South Carolina congressman who was one of 10 House Republicans to vote to impeach President Donald J. Trump after the Jan. 6 attacks, has a catchall term to describe the former president’s crusade against him: Trump’s Very Presidential Traveling Revenge Circus.Mr. Trump has made unseating Mr. Rice, a five-term congressman, one of his top priorities in the state’s primary elections on Tuesday. He threw his support in the Republican primary for Mr. Rice’s seat behind State Representative Russell Fry, calling into a rally for Mr. Fry this week and describing Mr. Rice as a “back-stabbing RINO,” the acronym for Republican in name only, a conservative slur.“He lifted up his hand and that was the end of his political career — or we hope it was,” Mr. Trump said of Mr. Rice’s vote to impeach him.In a 35-minute interview on Friday alongside his wife, Wrenzie, after a barbecue luncheon campaign event, Mr. Rice sounded every bit like a man in the fight for his political life. His campaign is not counting on an outright win against Mr. Fry but is instead bracing for a tough runoff with him.But while some, after crossing Mr. Trump, have tried to salvage their political careers by walking back their comments or retiring from Congress, Mr. Rice has doubled down.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.“To me, his gross failure — his inexcusable failure — was when it started,” Mr. Rice said of the Jan. 6 riot. “He watched it happen. He reveled in it. And he took no action to stop it. I think he had a duty to try to stop it, and he failed in that duty.”Mr. Rice, a pro-business conservative and self-proclaimed Chamber of Commerce Republican, helped craft Mr. Trump’s sweeping new tax code in 2017. Five years after those reforms and 17 months after the Jan. 6 attacks, he argued that the former president had overstayed his welcome in the G.O.P.“He’s the past,” Mr. Rice said of Mr. Trump. “I hope he doesn’t run again. And I think if he does run again, he hurts the Republican Party. We desperately need somebody who’s going to bring people together. And he is not that guy.”Mr. Rice said the Jan. 6 prime-time hearing on Thursday night, which featured footage of the Capitol riots and incriminating testimony from close Trump associates, “puts an exclamation point on what we did,” referring to the 10 House Republicans who backed impeachment.In the days after the riot at the Capitol, Mr. Rice said, he considered voting to impeach Mr. Trump, and spent that Saturday and Sunday in his home congressional district reading the dozens of stories he had asked his staff to send him about the president’s whereabouts on Jan. 6. As he learned of the president’s refusal to stop the attack, he became incensed. When it came time for his vote, he said he had “zero question in my mind” about whether Mr. Trump should be held accountable.“I did it then,” he said. “And I will do it tomorrow. And I’ll do it the next day or the day after that. I have a duty to uphold the Constitution. And that is what I did.”Mr. Rice did not vote to certify the election, however, saying he had become concerned about ballot discrepancies in Pennsylvania that were outlined in a letter to House Republican leadership.During a House Republican meeting one month after the Capitol riots, he defended Liz Cheney for her vote to impeach and criticized Kevin McCarthy, the minority leader, for his continued embrace of the former president, according to audio from the exchange.“Kevin went to Mar-a-Lago this weekend, shook his hand, took a picture and set up Trumpmajority.com. Personally, I find that offensive,” Mr. Rice said at the time.In the months following the vote, Mr. Rice has been made a pariah among those in Mr. Trump’s circle, as has his wife. “I don’t feel like I fit in with that group anymore,” Ms. Rice said on Friday, referring to the Republican base.Mr. Trump’s efforts to sway Republican primary voters and disparage Mr. Rice have left the congressman both frustrated and puzzled. He has come to view them as a political stunt.“Bring on the circus,” he said of Mr. Trump’s involvement in the primary. “You know, some people are afraid of clowns. I’m not afraid of clowns.”Jonathan Martin More

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      Trump Is Depicted as a Would-Be Autocrat Seeking to Hang Onto Power at All Costs

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      As the Jan. 6 committee outlined during its prime-time hearing, Donald J. Trump executed a seven-part conspiracy to overturn a free and fair democratic election.In the entire 246-year history of the United States, there was surely never a more damning indictment presented against an American president than outlined on Thursday night in a cavernous congressional hearing room where the future of democracy felt on the line.Other presidents have been accused of wrongdoing, even high crimes and misdemeanors, but the case against Donald J. Trump mounted by the bipartisan House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol described not just a rogue president but a would-be autocrat willing to shred the Constitution to hang onto power at all costs.As the committee portrayed it during its prime-time televised hearing, Mr. Trump executed a seven-part conspiracy to overturn a free and fair democratic election. According to the panel, he lied to the American people, ignored all evidence refuting his false fraud claims, pressured state and federal officials to throw out election results favoring his challenger, encouraged a violent mob to storm the Capitol and even signaled support for the execution of his own vice president.“Jan. 6 was the culmination of an attempted coup, a brazen attempt, as one rioter put it shortly after Jan. 6, to overthrow the government,” said Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the chairman of the select committee. “The violence was no accident. It represents Trump’s last stand, most desperate chance to halt the transfer of power.”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 TimesMost incriminating were the words of Mr. Trump’s own advisers and appointees, played over video on a giant screen above the committee dais and beamed out to a national television audience. There was his own attorney general who told him that his false election claims were “bullshit.” There was his own campaign lawyer who testified that there was no evidence of fraud sufficient to change the outcome. And there was his own daughter, Ivanka Trump, who acknowledged that she accepted the conclusion that the election was not, in fact, stolen as her father kept claiming.Much of the evidence was outlined by the lead Republican on the committee, Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, who has been ostracized by Mr. Trump and much of her own party for consistently denouncing his actions after the election. Unwavering, she sketched out the case and then addressed her fellow Republicans who have chosen to stand by their defeated former president and excuse his actions.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. Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump: In videos shown during the hearing, Mr.Trump’s daughter and son-in-law were stripped of their carefully managed images.“I say this to my Republican colleagues who are defending the indefensible: There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone but your dishonor will remain,” she said.Many of the details were previously reported, and many questions about Mr. Trump’s actions were left unanswered for now, but Ms. Cheney pulled together the committee’s central findings in relentless, prosecutorial fashion.People at a viewing party in Washington watching Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, speak during the hearing.Shuran Huang for The New York TimesSome of the new revelations and the confirmations of recent news reports were enough to prompt gasps in the room and, perhaps, in living rooms across the country. Told that the crowd on Jan. 6 was chanting “Hang Mike Pence,” the vice president who defied the president’s pressure to single-handedly block the transfer of power, Mr. Trump was quoted responding, “Maybe our supporters have the right idea.” Mike Pence, he added, “deserves it.”Ms. Cheney, the panel’s vice chairwoman, reported that in the wake of the Jan. 6 attack, members of Mr. Trump’s own cabinet discussed invoking the 25th Amendment to remove the president from office. She disclosed that Representative Scott Perry of Pennsylvania and “multiple other Republican congressmen” involved in trying to overturn the election sought pardons from Mr. Trump in his final days in office.She played a video clip of Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser who absented himself after the election rather than fight the conspiracy theorists egging on Mr. Trump, cavalierly dismissing threats by Pat A. Cipollone, the White House counsel, and other lawyers to resign in protest. “I took it up to just be whining, to be honest with you,” Mr. Kushner testified.And she noted that while Mr. Pence repeatedly took action to summon help to stop the mob on Jan. 6, the president himself made no such effort. Instead, his White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, tried to convince Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to pretend that Mr. Trump was actively involved.“He said, ‘We have to kill the narrative that the vice president is making all the decisions,’” General Milley said in videotaped testimony. “‘We need to establish the narrative that the president is still in charge, and that things are steady or stable,’ or words to that effect. I immediately interpreted that as politics, politics, politics.”Mr. Trump had no allies on the nine-member House committee, and he and his supporters have dismissed the panel’s work as a partisan smear attempt. On Fox News, which opted not to show the hearing, Sean Hannity was busy changing the subject, attacking the committee for not focusing on the breakdown in security at the Capitol, which he mainly blamed on Speaker Nancy Pelosi even though Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, then the Republican majority leader, shared control of the building with her at the time.Before the hearing, Mr. Trump tried again to rewrite history by casting the attack on the Capitol as a legitimate manifestation of public grievance against a stolen election. “January 6th was not simply a protest, it represented the greatest movement in the history of our Country to Make America Great Again,” he wrote on his new social media site.The panel played a video of Ivanka Trump, Mr. Trump’s daughter and former White House adviser, testifying behind closed doors.Kenny Holston for The New York TimesMr. Trump is hardly the first president reproached for misconduct, lawbreaking or even violating the Constitution. Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton were both impeached by the House, although acquitted by the Senate. John Tyler sided with the Confederacy during the Civil War. Richard M. Nixon resigned under the threat of impeachment for abusing his power to cover up corrupt campaign activities. Warren G. Harding had the Teapot Dome scandal and Ronald Reagan the Iran-contra affair.But the crimes alleged in most of those cases paled in comparison to what Mr. Trump is accused of, and while Mr. Tyler turned on the country he once led, he died before he could be held accountable. Mr. Nixon faced hearings during Watergate not unlike those that began on Thursday night and was involved in other scandals beyond the burglary that ultimately resulted in his downfall. But the brazen dishonesty and incitement of violence put on display on Thursday eclipsed even his misdeeds, according to many scholars.Mr. Trump, of course, was impeached twice already, and acquitted twice, the second time for his role in the Jan. 6 attack. But even so, the case against him now is far more extensive and expansive, after the committee conducted some 1,000 interviews and obtained more than 100,000 pages of documents.What the committee was trying to prove was that this was not a president with reasonable concerns about fraud or a protest that got out of control. Instead, the panel was trying to build the case that Mr. Trump was involved in a criminal conspiracy against democracy — that he knew there was no widespread fraud because his own people told him, that he intentionally summoned a mob to stop the transfer of power to Joseph R. Biden Jr. and that he sat by and did virtually nothing once the attack commenced.Whether the panel can change public views of those events remains unclear, but many political strategists and analysts consider it unlikely. With a more fragmented media and a more polarized society, most Americans have decided what they think about Jan. 6 and are only listening to those who share their attitudes. Still, there was another audience for the hearings as they got underway, and that was Attorney General Merrick B. Garland. If the committee was laying out what it considered an indictment against the former president, it seemed to be inviting the Justice Department to pursue the real kind in a grand jury and court of law.As she previewed the story that will be told in the weeks to come, Ms. Cheney all but wrote the script for Mr. Garland. “You will hear about plots to commit seditious conspiracy on Jan. 6,” she said, “a crime defined in our laws as conspiring to overthrow, put down or destroy by force the government of the United States or to oppose by force the authority thereof.”But if Mr. Garland disagrees and the hearings this month turn out to be the only trial Mr. Trump ever faces for his efforts to overturn the election, Ms. Cheney and her fellow committee members were resolved to make sure that they will at least win a conviction with the jury of history. More