More than three hours. 187 minutes.
This is the time during which former US President Donald Trump resisted numerous calls from his entourage imploring him to calm the crowd storming the Capitol in Washington. Under the gaze of the world.
That was a year ago, January 6, 2021.
Haranged for days, heated to the block by repeated and unfounded accusations of massive fraud and theft of elections, thousands of supporters of the populist then tried to prevent the certification of the vote confirming the victory of Joe Biden at the presidential election of November 2020, by attacking the American legislature. A tragedy which, a year later, continues to divide Americans, even if its nature of a coup d’etat is becoming increasingly clear, as is the responsibility of the former American president who, since the White House, has tried to oppose anything less than democracy.
“The January 6 uprising should be understood as an attempted coup d’etat that is part of a larger effort to overthrow free and fair elections,” summarized in an interview with the Duty political scientist Omar Wasow, professor at Pomona College in California. Former President Trump and his allies attempted to use a wide range of tactics, from failed prosecutions and intimidation of election officials to mob violence, in order to disrupt the peaceful transition of the government. to be able to. “
The conclusions, to come in the course of the year 2022, of the special committee of the House of Representatives responsible for investigating this attack on the dome of American democracy may also be particularly incriminating for the former occupier. from the Oval Office. In recent weeks, the group of elected officials, which included only two Republicans – Liz Cheney from Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger from Illinois, who have since become targets of the former president – heard from nearly 300 witnesses. Members of the former administration and those close to Donald Trump’s political entourage for the most part.
The committee also reviewed more than 30,000 documents, including nearly a thousand pages sent in early December by the populist’s ex-chief of staff, Mark Meadows. Their content seems to confirm the worst apprehensions facing the planned nature of the attack on Congress and the intentions of the former US president and his entourage to stay in power.
For example: a 38-page PowerPoint document sent to the committee summarizes a strategy developed in the days leading up to the January 6 insurgency to reverse the November election result. In essence, the plan recommended that Donald Trump declare a state of emergency in the name of national security, invalidate electronic voting, unify under the President’s leadership the National Guard, the Justice Departments, Homeland Security and other government agencies to recount the vote in the 50 states, and especially to put the Vice President, Mike Pence, to contribute to pass the votes cast for the Democratic camp in that of the Republicans, particularly in the states where fraud has been alleged.
Recall that on December 20, a large Associated Press investigation identified barely 475 fraudulent ballots in the six key states that opened the doors of the White House to Joe Biden. This represents 0.15% of the 311,257 ballots that in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin brought down Donald Trump, of the 25.5 million votes cast across the country for the democrat. A 0.15% “which would not have made any difference to the outcome of the poll,” summed up the press agency.
Deaf to indignation
During the attack on the Capitol, Mark Meadows also received several text messages, including some from the son of ex-president, Donald Trump Jr., and emblematic figures of the conservative television network Fox News, urging him to intervene with of the president to put an end to the ongoing violence. The rioters then broke into the seat of legislative power. The sequence of events was fatal for five people, including a policeman on duty.
“Mark, the president needs to tell the people on Capitol Hill to go home. It hurts us all. He is destroying his heritage, ”wrote host Laura Ingraham, in a direct exchange with the US executive revealed a few weeks ago by the committee responsible for the investigation on January 6. “Please bring it to TV,” added colleague Brian Kilmeade, saying the president was “destroying everything you have done” at the time.
Paradoxically, after having delivered these compromising traces for Donald Trump, his former chief of staff decided to reverse his decision in early December to testify before the congress committee. Like Steve Bannon, a black eminence and adviser to the populist, who defied his subpoena to appear before elected officials, Mark Meadows was charged with contempt of Congress a few days ago.
This resistance to testify does not work in favor of Donald Trump. In early December, his ex-lawyer, John Eastman, who participated in the strategy to steal the election from Democrats, refused to appear before elected officials, citing the Fifth Amendment to the constitution which allows him not to respond to questions during an investigation to avoid self-incrimination.
Worried relatives
The gesture may illustrate the concerns that are now spreading in the entourage of the former president in the face of the risks of criminal prosecution that could arise from the investigation carried out by elected American officials.
Lawsuits that Donald Trump seeks not to fuel, he who brought before the Supreme Court of the country in November the last judgment authorizing the National Archives to transmit to the committee documents and exchanges emanating from the White House before and during January 6 . He believes executive privilege allows him to keep such information out of the public eye, something a Washington court failed to recognize this fall.
While obstructing the investigation, the ex-president also stirs statements within Republican and Conservative troops who keep alive the idea of electoral fraud – at odds with the facts – and that which the riots in the January 6 were thereby justified. Last October, Fox News went further, with a documentary signed by ultra-conservative commentator Tucker Carlson claiming that January 6 was nothing more than a stunt by Democrats to “persecute” conservative American patriots. Essentially.
“The events of January 6 were so shocking and unprecedented that everyone, including elected officials and Republican leaders, denounced them in the aftermath of the tragedy, says John Carey, specialist in American politics at Dartmouth College, joined by The duty in New Hampshire. At this point, then, it was unimaginable to see mainstream public opinion condone this violence. However, as has often been the case in the past five years, what was unimaginable quickly became commonplace. “
A recent poll conducted in October by Quinnipiac University found that 66% of Republicans believed the Capitol Riots were not an attack on the US government; 77% felt at the same time that Donald Trump could not be held responsible. On Tuesday, the Associated Press revealed that barely 39% of Republicans remember the day as an “extremely or very violent” event, a year after the tragedy. Against 87% among the Democratic electorate.
Another probe stunt launched in November by Monmouth University shed light on the fact that 73% of those same Republicans saw Joe Biden’s election as the sole result of electoral fraud. Perceptions rooted in the repeated lies of the former president, amplified by conservative networks and digital echo chambers, and that Republican elected officials fear to question, in the run-up to the legislative elections of November 2022.
The populist was to speak on January 6 to commemorate this “beautiful day” at the end of which he had declared his love to the rioters: “Go home! We love you ! He had told them. However, he announced Tuesday evening by means of a press release that he was canceling this meeting, protesting again against the “fraud” which he said, without him providing any proof, tainted the last presidential election. won by Joe Biden. “That was the crime of the century!” »Writes Donald Trump.
With Agence France-Presse