The damning case against Trump that the House committee has uncovered — and
At the outset of this summer’s hearings, the select committee faced questions critical to its credibility and its prospects of being one of the few investigatory processes to ever hold Trump to account.
- Can it prove that the events after the 2020 election and the subsequent riot at the US Capitol were consciously orchestrated by Trump?
- And could it then use that evidence to show criminal intent that might prompt the Justice Department to prosecute the ex-President?
- With Trump itching to launch a new campaign that would test US institutions as never before, could the committee further shift public opinion against a lawless and autocratic ex-President who remains a threat to democracy?
The committee has comprehensively answered at least the first three of those questions and made progress on the other two.
It has also embroidered a broader narrative of an out-of-control President who put his own fantastical belief he won an election above more than two centuries of democratic tradition and the national interest. And, most chillingly, it is advancing a case — in the words of a key witness, retired conservative Judge J. Michael Luttig — that Trump remains “a clear and present danger” to US democracy.
As committee Vice Chair Liz Cheney, a Wyoming Republican, put it after Thursday’s extraordinary hearing, “Every American must consider this: Can a President who made the choices Donald Trump made during the violence of January 6 ever be trusted with any position of authority in our great nation again?”
That evidence has exposed a direct and dominant role by Trump in discrediting the 2020 election, making a false case that he won it, and the cascade of events that led to the worst attack on the US Capitol in more than 200 years.
What the committee has established
The hearings might best be compared to a prosecution in a court room, with evidence from multiple documentary sources interspersed with videotaped depositions and live testimony from the most compelling witnesses.
Cheney often opened hearings with a summary to the audience using language like, “You will hear how ex-President Trump …” as if she were an attorney addressing a jury, in this case the one at home.
This is what the committee has established so far.
- The insurrection was carnage, not the overwrought protest described by Trump allies. Previously unseen film footage from outside and inside the Capitol showed Trump’s mob smashing windows, battling with security officers and seeking vengeance against then-Vice President Mike Pence for failing to block President Joe Biden’s election win. Capitol Police officer Caroline Edwards testified about a “war scene,” adding, “I was slipping in people’s blood.”
- Trump was told repeatedly…
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