The January 6th committee hearings have been great TV. There's been surprising testimony, even more surprising new videos and an amazing look at just how childish, and obstinate Donald Trump was in the last few months of his presidency after his defeat. One of the effective things that the committee has done is to have former members of Trump's own staff (and even members of his own family) testify as to how corrupt he was: from his refusal to accept his loss in 2020 to the fact that he seemed to openly enjoy watching the riot of January 6th. on TV and was reluctant to stop it. As the committee showed, he even added fuel to the fire at one point when he tweeted out attacks against his own Vice President, Mike Pence, while the riot was going on. (New footage of the rioters showed them responding to the texts and getting even angrier because of them).
To me the most chilling part of the presentation was when former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson testified that Trump, wanting to make sure that his January 6th rally, that took place just before the riot ,had as many people as possible attending. So he wanted the metal detectors around the rally removed, because he saw the people at the rally as no threat to him. In other words, the president was fine with armed people coming to his rally, even as he told them to march onto the capital building afterwards.
But the committee hearings, as gripping as they were, upset me more than shocked me. It was clear from the moment that riot began that Trump's months of lies about the election incited it. He was a criminal once the first capitol officer was beaten.
But it's easy to say that, and a whole other thing to prove it. Now that the committee is over (although there will be more findings released in the upcoming months), the big question is, will Attorney General Merrick Garland formally bring charges against Donald Trump? Over 60% of the American people in recent polls believe he should. While it may seem obvious that Trump is guilty of at least one crime in relation to the riots, getting an actual conviction against him may prove harder than it would seem.
First of all, there seems to be no question that Trump is going to declare that he's running again in 2024 any day now, which would allow him to dismiss any criminal charges against him as a partisan witch hunt. (Some people around him have said that he sees running again as a "get out of jail free card".) And the fact that no Attorney General has ever brought up criminal charges against a former president, shows how difficult a process this could be. One complication is trying to find an impartial jury; I mean, how can you find 12 adults in America who have no strong opinions about Trump either way? Remember, it would only take one Trump loyalist on the jury to wreck the whole process. And if Trump were to beat the charges, it could embolden his allegations that it was all a partisan issue even more, and help him politically.
Despite these difficulties, I personally still think that Donald Trump should be formally charged with crimes by Merrick Garland, because one of the fundamental truths of our country should always be that even the President of the United States is not above the law. Clearly, Trump committed criminal acts before and on January 6th., and if the country lets him off the hook, it opens the way for another president, perhaps one smarter and more competent than Trump, to get away with similar crimes. The issues here are too big to ignore; Trump can reasonably face any number of charges, from inciting a riot to illegal obstruction of congress. He is even open to separate charges due to his attempt to overturn the election outcome in the state of Georgia, which should be easy to prove given that there is a recording of him openly asking Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to "find" him votes. (And as a side note here, I would point out that Trump has had 2 secret recordings of him released in the past few years. The first was the infamous Access Hollywood tape, in which he bragged about sexually assaulting women, and this one in which he tried to get a state official to steal an election for him. So, one in which he bragged about getting away with a crime, and one in which he committed one!).
Even if he never reaches the White House again, the stain of the Trump presidency is one that will hang over the country for years. Holding him accountable for the terrible crimes that he committed on January 6th is one step in removing that stain. For once in his life he should be punished.
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