It is on an accusation that the public hearings of the parliamentary commission of inquiry on January 6, in the United States, have just ended this week.
Nearly four months after taking the air to do the autopsy in front of the Americans of this insurrection fomented by the Republicans of Donald Trump in order to prevent the certification of the vote cast in November 2020 in favor of the Democrat Joe Biden, the elected officials have established the great responsibility of former US President Donald Trump in the tragic sequence of events. The latter was even summoned to appear before them to answer for these acts.
However, if the revelations on the fine mechanics of this failed coup are now very strong, the logical continuation of such an exercise still remains very uncertain. It could disappoint those who expect a quick and firm condemnation of the prime contractor, a necessary detachment with a political figure undermining the foundations of democracy, and above all the restoration of a social and media environment to make verified facts prevail. and truth about lies and delusional beliefs. Among others.
“The January 6 Commission has largely achieved its goal of documenting the full gravity of the insurrection and identifying those responsible, Drops in an interview with the To have to Cornell Clayton, professor of political science at Washington State University. She was particularly effective in drawing attention to former President Donald Trump’s role in spreading the ‘big lie’ about stealing the election, summoning violent groups to the Capitol, and building a plan for him. multi-pronged exercise aimed at having the election annulled under pressure. But given the cleaved nature of the electorate and the siloing of the political media, its public hearings will ultimately have minimal impact on voter behavior. »
And yet. The facts established by the commission, after hearing nearly 1,000 witnesses in private since July 2021, then in public since last June, as well as the analysis of thousands of documents, leave little room for discussion. excuse and indifference. Including in the ranks of the Republicans, who were paradoxically the main architects of this highlighting of disturbing truths.
“When you look back, the most disturbing fact that came out of the work of this committee is that all of the evidence comes almost entirely from Republicans,” Democrat Bennie Thompson, the committee’s chairman, said in his opening statement Thursday.
It was these Republicans who, one after the other, testified that Donald Trump could not ignore that he had indeed lost an election in a free and fair electoral process, and that no fraud was the cause of his defeat. In his deposition released during the commission’s proceedings, his former attorney general, Bill Barr, told him that this theory was of the bullshit. Justice Department No. 2 Richard Donoghue also informed him in person that there was no evidence of widespread fraud.
Worse, of the 62 lawsuits filed in court by Republicans to expose this purposely fabricated fraud, 61 were dismissed due to the weakness or whimsical nature of the arguments submitted by the accusers. Only one brought to light irregularities, minor, which could not lead to the cancellation of the results.
Despite everything, Donald Trump maintained his accusations in the public square. And when the Supreme Court refused to grant his request to annul the result of the poll to remain in office, against the will of the voters, the populist told his chief of staff: “I don’t want people know we lost, Mark. It’s embarassing. Understand it. We have to understand it. I don’t want people to know that we lost. The comments were reported by Mark Meadows’ senior assistant, Cassidy Hutchinson, a key witness to this commission.
feed the hate
On Thursday, Republican Liz Cheney, co-chair of this parliamentary group, also brought to light the fact that Donald Trump had a fair portrait of his defeat by his multiple collaborators. He was also “in a unique position”, as President of the United States, to know well before anyone else that the crowd he had summoned to Washington on January 6, 2021 was made up of violent and armed elements whose he intention was indeed to storm the dome of American democracy and even to kill members of the legislative branch. This is reported by several documents from the American secret services, some details of which were released by the commission, documents which necessarily went back to the headquarters of the executive and to the office of Donald Trump in the days and even the weeks preceding the drama.
Still, the ex-president unleashed that mob on Capitol Hill, even stoking the group’s violence against his Vice President Mike Pence. “None of this is normal, is acceptable, is legitimate,” concluded the elected Republican.
Other disturbing signs, a skewer of key players in this insurrection, including Roger Stone, close to Donald Trump and the paramilitary groups who stormed the capitol, the ex-national security adviser of the populist, Michael Flynn and lawyer John Eastman, adviser to the ex-president and craftsman of a “gamick” aimed at making false voters appear in favor of Trump, refused to answer the questions of the commission by invoking the fifth amendment. This section allows a US citizen to remain silent when called to testify so as not to incriminate themselves.
As if that weren’t enough, the whole campaign to denounce an electoral fraud that never existed has enabled Donald Trump’s camp to collect no less than 250 million dollars from his supporters to supposedly fuel an “Electoral Defense Fund” which, too, was only an illusion. “I don’t believe there is actually a fund called the Election Defense Fund,” Hanna Allred, a former Trump staffer, told the committee, making Rep. Zoe Lofgren say that “the big lie” of Donald Trump was also “a big scam”.
Fixed opinions
“The Jan. 6 Committee has come closest to showing Americans the immediate threat of events and their long-term impact on governance and representative democracy in the United States,” said political scientist Karen Hult, joint by The duty at Virginia Tech where she teaches. But while also reflecting the current division in the political environment, this commission may also have contributed to amplifying it”.
At the end of September, a probe launched by Monmouth University revealed that after eight public hearings of the commission of inquiry, barely four in ten Americans hold Donald Trump responsible for the January 6 uprising and three in ten continue to believe Joe Biden’s election was fraudulent. And this, despite the convergence of facts, verified and verifiable testifying to the contrary.
On the clock, 20 million Americans followed the first public hearings of this commission of inquiry on January 6, according to Nielsen, a figure which drops to 10 million thereafter. This represents just 8.3% of registered voters in the United States, or 12.6% of Americans who went to the polls in 2020.
“If the goal was to change public opinion on Donald Trump and the threats to American democracy, then the success of this commission is only partial, comments in an interview David Schultz, specialist in American politics at the Hamline University in Minnesota. But in reality, it is more likely to motivate both Democrats and Republicans to mobilize and vote in November. [lors des élections de mi-mandat], and this, in the maintenance of the divisions anchored in the spirit of the Americans. »
Division which is also measured in relation to the commission of inquiry: 25% of Americans polled by Monmouth University believe that it has contributed to strengthening democracy in the United States, while 34% rather say that it came weaken.