On Thursday the January 6th Committee gave us an early Christmas present by releasing its 845 page final report. Unlike the preliminary report they had released on Monday, this one has a detailed six page index, as well as 152 pages of appendices.
The Committee made five overarching recommendations in the report, including the following:
- That Trump should be barred from holding federal or state office ever again, based on the 14th Amendment’s prohibition on previous office holders having “engaged in insurrection or rebellion.”
- That Congress enact stronger criminal penalties for those who obstruct the peaceful transfer of power.
- That Congress enact stronger criminal penalties for those who threaten election workers.
- That Congressional authority to enforce their subpoenas be clarified, and that House subpoenas be enforceable in federal court.
- That there be strengthened oversight over the Capitol Police (including additional joint hearings with testimony from the Capitol Police Board).
Other key findings of the report, many laid out in previous hearings, include the following:
- That Trump planned to declare victory regardless of the outcome of the election. The committee lays out how Trump’s plan to overturn the 2020 election was not spontaneous, but premeditated.[1]
- That Trump was aware of the risk of violence when he called on his supporters to march on the Capitol. The report demonstrates how extremist groups like the Oathkeepers and the Proud Boys banded together for the insurrection.
- That Trump was aware of violence at the Capitol for more than three hours before he agreed to intervene ( the so-called “187 minutes of dereliction” in which Trump gleefully watched the insurrection happen in real time on Fox News).
- That all of Trump’s top aides were aware that no “election fraud” investigations would change the outcome of the election.
Hope Hicks, Trump’s long-time trusted aide testified as to the reason Trump was so insistent that the election was stolen: when she suggested to him that his refusal to concede the obvious was “tarnishing his legacy,” he replied to the effect that “Nobody will care about my legacy if I lose. The only thing that matters is winning.”
And there you have it, my friends.
The only thing that matters is winning.
The foundations of our democracy have teetered this year, election-denialism has become common-place (like with Kari Lake in Arizona) because of one man’s obsession with winning at all costs.
Trump — as has been painfully obvious for some time — doesn’t have anything that he wants to accomplish for America. (We’re still waiting for his “amazing” health care plan.) He just can’t tolerate being seen as a loser.
More than two years after he lost (by more than 8 million votes, by the way) he’s still running his election denialism racket from down south.
In a separate story this week, Fox News’ Sean Hannity — when he was finally put under oath in the defamation lawsuit being prosecuted by the Dominion voting machine company — had to admit that he never believed the lie that Trump was cheated of victory in the 2020 presidential election “for one second.”
Not for one second.
Of course, that didn’t stop him from promoting the election lie for months and months and months on Fox News.
Can’t wait to see what the jury award will be in the defamation lawsuit against Fox News — now that Alex Jones has been ordered to pay more than a billion dollars in damages in the three defamation lawsuits against him — when that one is over.
[1] This is hardly news to anybody who followed the 2016 campaign where Trump, who expected to lose, laid all of the groundwork for claiming a stolen election.