Today is the deadline for four of Donald Trump's most notorious toadies to provide documents to the House special committee probing the Jan. 6 insurrection. Chief of staff Mark Meadows, aide Dan Scavino, professional grizzled hobo Steve Bannon and determined remora Kash Patel have all vowed to ignore their subpoenas from the committee; Trump himself has insisted they do so, claiming as ex-president to have an "executive privilege" to block their testimony that is not a real thing and never has been.
The committee investigating the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol wants to hear from each of the four because there's been a great deal of evidence that Trump's inner circle gathered the violent crowd that day for the explicit purpose of threatening Congress into overturning the election—an orchestrated act of sedition. Investigators want to know the full extent to which Trump's White House staff, his allies, and Trump himself took action to gather and incite the crowd.
We know Trump's team gathered a collection of some of the most militant domestic extremists in the nation and told them, on television, to march to the Capitol to make their feelings known to the lawmakers assembled at that very moment to recognize Trump's election loss. We know Trump and allies went to significant lengths to intimidate his vice president, Mike Pence, into accepting a scheme to nullify vote counts during the proceeding and that the crowd was assembled as a specific means of intimidating Congress into taking such action.
We know, in short, that Donald Trump fully intended to topple the next United States government, that his staff helped him, that his Republican allies helped him, and that a significant chunk of the now-fascist Republican Party's lawmakers endorsed or abetted the scheme. Now it's time for each of those implicated in the seditious plot to testify about who knew what, who did what, and when.
The refusal of Trump's sedition-backers to comply with the House subpoenas sets up the predictable next stage of the fight: The committee now has to decide what to do about it. Committee chair Bennie Thompson has already indicated the committee was prepared to make criminal referrals to the Department of Justice, and because President Joe Biden has explicitly rejected the notion of invoking executive privilege on Trump's behalf it is expected that the new slightly de-Trumpened department will not shield Trump on this one, no matter how much he screams for it.
The committee, and Congress as a whole, needs to do significantly more than file charges. This was an attempted insurrection. It targeted the nation's top elected lawmakers, and the shouted goals of at least part of the assembled crowd were to capture or kill elected officials in order to further Trump's plot. Even criminal charges aren't enough; the documents simply must be produced. It is a matter of national security.
Imposing steep, ruinous fines for every day of delay is in order. Finally doing what has long been threatened, reestablishing a Capitol cell in which those refusing to help the committee investigate a seditious insurrection so that those seditionists can rot there until their minds have been changed, needs to be on the table as well. It's difficult to imagine a more plausible reason for doing so than when investigating a literal violent attempt to topple our government.
Attempting to overthrow democracy based on hastily crafted hoaxes meant to undermine the legitimacy of an election is an unforgivable act. Those who act to cover up how it happened are traitors to their nation.
The committee investigating the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol wants to hear from each of the four because there's been a great deal of evidence that Trump's inner circle gathered the violent crowd that day for the explicit purpose of threatening Congress into overturning the election—an orchestrated act of sedition. Investigators want to know the full extent to which Trump's White House staff, his allies, and Trump himself took action to gather and incite the crowd.
We know Trump's team gathered a collection of some of the most militant domestic extremists in the nation and told them, on television, to march to the Capitol to make their feelings known to the lawmakers assembled at that very moment to recognize Trump's election loss. We know Trump and allies went to significant lengths to intimidate his vice president, Mike Pence, into accepting a scheme to nullify vote counts during the proceeding and that the crowd was assembled as a specific means of intimidating Congress into taking such action.
We know, in short, that Donald Trump fully intended to topple the next United States government, that his staff helped him, that his Republican allies helped him, and that a significant chunk of the now-fascist Republican Party's lawmakers endorsed or abetted the scheme. Now it's time for each of those implicated in the seditious plot to testify about who knew what, who did what, and when.
The refusal of Trump's sedition-backers to comply with the House subpoenas sets up the predictable next stage of the fight: The committee now has to decide what to do about it. Committee chair Bennie Thompson has already indicated the committee was prepared to make criminal referrals to the Department of Justice, and because President Joe Biden has explicitly rejected the notion of invoking executive privilege on Trump's behalf it is expected that the new slightly de-Trumpened department will not shield Trump on this one, no matter how much he screams for it.
The committee, and Congress as a whole, needs to do significantly more than file charges. This was an attempted insurrection. It targeted the nation's top elected lawmakers, and the shouted goals of at least part of the assembled crowd were to capture or kill elected officials in order to further Trump's plot. Even criminal charges aren't enough; the documents simply must be produced. It is a matter of national security.
Imposing steep, ruinous fines for every day of delay is in order. Finally doing what has long been threatened, reestablishing a Capitol cell in which those refusing to help the committee investigate a seditious insurrection so that those seditionists can rot there until their minds have been changed, needs to be on the table as well. It's difficult to imagine a more plausible reason for doing so than when investigating a literal violent attempt to topple our government.
Attempting to overthrow democracy based on hastily crafted hoaxes meant to undermine the legitimacy of an election is an unforgivable act. Those who act to cover up how it happened are traitors to their nation.