US Parliament – Trump must be held accountable for the attack on the Capitol

Trump must be held responsible for the attack on the Capitol

The parliamentary commission of inquiry in charge of the attempted insurrection of January 6, 2021 estimated that former President Donald Trump had “opened the way to disorder and corruption”.

Posted today at 02:56

The “January 6 commission” will then withdraw from public scrutiny to work on its final report, which will be delivered in the fall.

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Donald Trump has opened the floodgates “to disorder and corruption” and must be held legally responsible for the January 6, 2021 attack, the chairman of the House of Inquiry into the assault on the Capitol said Thursday.

The former Republican president “tried to destroy our democratic institutions,” Bennie Thompson said during a primetime hearing that wrapped up a series of public presentations of his commission’s work. For the elected Democrat, all those responsible for the attack, including at the White House, will have to “answer for their actions in court”. “It will take severe consequences, otherwise I fear that our democracy will not recover.”

Members of the commission then presented the day of January 6, 2021 as experienced “minute by minute” by Donald Trump, whom they accused of having “failed in his duty” by not preventing his supporters from sowing trouble. chaos in the Capitol. Yet it was he who had summoned them to Washington, the day the parliamentarians were to certify the victory of his Democratic rival Joe Biden in the presidential election.

Around noon, in a fiery speech in the heart of the capital, he had asked them to “fight like the devils” against supposed “massive electoral fraud”. He then returned to the White House, while the crowd launched an assault on the temple of American democracy. He had taken more than three hours before calling on his supporters to “come home”, in a video where he also said “love” them.

A desire to “stay in power”

Thursday’s hearing before the committee of the House of Representatives returned to what happened between these two speeches.

Entrenched in the private dining room of the White House, Donald Trump followed the attack on television “while his close advisers and family members begged him to intervene”, described the elected Democrat Elaine Luria . But “President Trump refused to act because of his selfish desire to hold on to power,” she added.

In a video clip of his deposition, former White House legal adviser Pat Cipollone confirmed that he said around 2:00 p.m. “very clearly that we needed an immediate and clear public statement to call people leave the Capitol. As for the federal police, that of Washington, the army, the national guards… President Trump “did not call them to give orders, nor to offer help”, to the Capitol agents overwhelmed by the crowd, pointed out Elaine Luria.

Trump’s “ambiguous” behavior

“The president did not make a mistake by not acting for 187 minutes (…) he chose not to act”, asserted Adam Kinzinger, one of the two elected Republicans who agreed to participate in the work of the commission and since repudiated by their party. Worse, at 2:24 p.m. he sent a tweet criticizing his Vice President Mike Pence for not wanting to block the certification of the election results, fueling the grievances of the rioters, the lawmakers noted.

Within the next two hours, he sent two more tweets simply calling on the crowd to “stay peaceful”. Then deputy White House spokeswoman Sarah Matthews reported that he agreed to send the message only after his own daughter Ivanka intervened. “It was insufficient”, “we hoped for something less ambiguous”, reported Matthew Pottinger, then deputy national security adviser, also called as a witness Thursday evening.

And when he finally shot a video to call on his supporters to leave the Capitol, he did not respect the text written by his advisers. “I know your pain,” he chose to say, presenting himself again as the victim of a “stolen” election.

“Above the Law”

This public session is the eighth in six weeks and the second broadcast in prime time throughout the country. The previous ones have focused, among other things, on the role of the far right in the assault or on the pressure exerted on electoral agents by Donald Trump.

New auditions will take place in September, said Bennie Thompson. A final report is expected in the fall. Whatever his recommendations, the decision to prosecute Donald Trump will rest with Justice Minister Merrick Garland, who does not rule it out. “No one is above the law,” he said Wednesday.

Donald Trump, who openly flirts with the idea of running for president in 2024, vehemently denounces the work of the commission and would not fail to present himself as the victim of a political cabal if he were indicted.