A vital pedagogical exercise for American democracy began on Thursday, June 9, in a hall of Congress. It was also an exceptional television moment, whose sobriety of the actors only reinforced the intensity. The House of Representatives Committee of Inquiry held a first public hearing to trace the thread of events that led to the January 6, 2021 assault on the Capitol by supporters of Donald Trump. This dark day was “the culmination of a coup attempt”summarized in the introduction the Democrat Bennie Thompson (Mississippi), chairman of the commission.
Seated under a giant screen, the nine members of the commission sat in a solemn atmosphere, in front of an audience full of photographers. The hearing was finely tuned, conducted by Bennie Thompson and the commission’s vice chair, Republican Liz Cheney (Wyoming). “January 6 and the lies that led to the insurrection endangered two and a half centuries of constitutional democracy”, said Bennie Thomson, to frame the issue of the moment. But it was above all Liz Cheney who left her mark on the audition. Having become a pestiferous within the Republican Party, hated by Donald Trump, she has been engaged for months in a crusade to establish the truth on January 6, in the company of the other elected member of her party within the commission, Adam Kinzinger (Illinois). For the daughter of former Vice-President Dick Cheney, this is the decisive battle of her political life, which allows neither weakness nor half-measures.
Speaking in a tense, implacable, but still controlled voice, Liz Cheney unrolled a real indictment against the former leader. “President Trump called the crowd, assembled the crowd and lit the fuse for this attack”did she say. “Over many months, she continued, Donald Trump oversaw and coordinated a sophisticated seven-part plan to overturn the presidential election and prevent the transfer of presidential power. » The commission, whose work will continue until the start of the school year, has therefore already come to the conclusion that the president was on the front line in the “attempted coup”. After January 6 and the failure of the project, his advisers would even have estimated that he “was too dangerous to be left alone”, added Liz Cheney, also indicating that members of the cabinet had then discussed a possible invocation of article 25 of the Constitution, with a view to an impeachment of the president.
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