Assault on the Capitol, three years later | Insurrection, you said?

(New York) “We can now add January 6, 2021 to the very short list of dates in American history that will forever live in infamy. »

Borrowing Franklin Roosevelt’s words about December 7, 1941, the date of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, New York Senator Chuck Schumer, leader of the Democrats in the upper house of the American Congress, uttered these words on the evening of the storming of the United States Capitol by enraged Donald Trump supporters.

However, three years later, the Americans are still very far from the consensus they reached regarding the attack which marked their country’s entry into the Second World War. In fact, they have rarely been so divided on an issue since their Civil War, started in 1861 by the southern slave states.

Their division today is partly about how to define what happened in Washington on that gray, cold and windy day when Congress had to, for the first time in American history, interrupt the certification of the results of a presidential election.

Certainly, the time has passed when a Republican representative could describe as a “normal tourist visit” the violent intrusion into the Capitol by a crowd encouraged by a president who is today accused of having attempted what none of his predecessors had done before him, that is to say, prevent the peaceful transfer of power.

But Republicans are still working today to minimize this unprecedented attack on American democracy. In particular, they refuse to use the word “insurrection” to describe it. A word that certain tenors of their party, including George W. Bush, Mitt Romney and Mitch McConnell, have nevertheless used since January 6, 2021.

Even one of Donald Trump’s lawyers used it during the second impeachment trial against the former president, accused of inciting insurrection.

“The question before us is not whether there was a violent insurrection at the Capitol. On this point, everyone agrees,” Michael van der Veen declared before the senators, who were going to acquit the 45^e president.

“Demonstration”, “riot” or “insurrection”?

In fact, around the same time, conservative lawyer and commentator Kurt Schlichter was already urging Townhall readers to reject the word “insurrection.” What happened on January 6 in Washington was, according to him, nothing more than a “riot” attributable to “a few guys dressed like Conan the fake barbarian [qui] acted like jerks and occasionally got into fights with the cops.”

The idea caught on. Last July, the Republican governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, in turn spoke of a “demonstration” which “degenerated into a riot”.

“But the idea that this was a plan to overthrow the government of the United States is not true,” he added, ignoring the definition of the word “insurrection” provided by dictionaries, includingOxford English Dictionary : “The action of taking up arms or openly resisting established authority. »

Three years later, this semantic debate is at the heart of the legal battle which is taking place around the electability of Donald Trump. In a petition presented Wednesday to the Supreme Court of the United States, the former president’s lawyers argued in particular that the attack on the Capitol was not an “insurrection” and that their client had “in no way participated to an insurrection.”

They thus asked the highest American court to invalidate the recent decision of the Supreme Court of Colorado to disqualify Donald Trump from the Republican primary of this state under article 3 of the 14^e amendment to the American Constitution. Written in the wake of the civil war, this article excludes from any public office anyone who has engaged in acts of “insurrection” after having taken an oath to defend the Constitution.

According to the Colorado Supreme Court, “the record amply established that the events of January 6 constituted a concerted and public use of force or threat of force by a group of persons to obstruct or impede the government American to take the necessary steps to accomplish the peaceful transfer of power in this country. Whatever the definition, this is an insurrection. »

The U.S. Supreme Court announced Friday that it will take up the issue in February.

Two stories

But Donald Trump is not content to deny this conclusion. He also rewrites history, as defeated Southerners did after the Civil War by claiming that slavery was not the cause. Thus, according to the former president, January 6, 2021 was a “beautiful day” and those who were arrested, charged or convicted for their role in the assault on the Capitol are “patriots” who will probably deserve the presidential pardon if he is elected next November.

It follows from this instant revisionism that the greatest threat to American democracy does not come from Donald Trump and his fiercest supporters, but from Joe Biden and the Democrats, who “instrumentalize” the justice system to fight their adversaries.

A survey published this week by the Washington Post demonstrates the effectiveness of this message, to which are added conspiracy theories spread by conservative media, including Fox News: 7 out of 10 Republicans believe that too much importance is given to the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol .

Yet this attack took center stage in Joe Biden’s speech Friday at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, where George Washington’s army survived a freezing winter in 1778 and acquired the cohesion and determination necessary for victorious combat. for democracy and independence.

In the eyes of the Democratic president, there is no doubt that this attack was an “insurrection” and that Donald Trump gave it his support.

Prominent conservative jurists William Baude and Michael Stokes Paulsen fully agree with this view.

“Ultimately, Donald Trump both “engaged” in “insurrection or rebellion” and provided “aid or comfort” to others engaging in such conduct, in the original sense of those terms. as they are used in article 3 of 14^e amendment,” they wrote in a notable article where they concluded that Donald Trump was ineligible.

Despite everything, this man who advocated in December 2022 the abrogation of the American Constitution could again take an oath to defend this same Constitution, on January 20, 2025, outside the Capitol desecrated by his supporters three years ago today for day.

For his supporters, it would be a great day. For others, it would be another day of infamy.