Trump on "Face the Nation": Turning January 6 Upside Down
...with a Stalinist threat to jail the "enemies within"
In an interview with NBC’s Kristen Welker Trump said he’s pardon many of the January 6 insurrectionist thugs…and said the congressional committee, which exposed the truth about his detailed and multi-pronged attempt to stay in power despite losing an election, belonged in jail.
One of the more prominent members of that committee — Liz Cheney — responded:
This morning, President-elect Trump again lied about the January 6th Select Committee, and said members of the Committee 'should go to jail' for carrying out our constitutional responsibilities. Here is the truth: Donald Trump attempted to overturn the 2020 presidential election and seize power. He mobilized an angry mob and sent them to the United States Capitol, where they attacked police officers, invaded the building, and halted the official counting of electoral votes. Trump watched on television as police officers were brutally beaten and the Capitol was assaulted, refusing for hours to tell the mob to leave. This was the worst breach of our Constitution by any president in our nation’s history. Donald Trump’s suggestion that members of Congress who later investigated his illegal and unconstitutional actions should be jailed is a continuation of his assault on the rule of law and the foundations of our republic.
Donald Trump knows his claims about the select committee are ridiculous and false, as has been detailed extensively, including by Chairman Thompson in this July 2023 letter. There is no conceivably appropriate factual or constitutional basis for what Donald Trump is suggesting – a Justice Department investigation of the work of a congressional committee – and any lawyer who attempts to pursue that course would quickly find themselves engaged in sanctionable conduct.
What the public now deserves to see is the evidence and grand jury material assembled by Special Counsel Smith, including the grand jury testimony of Vice President Pence and members of Donald Trump’s former White House and campaign staff.
The Justice Department should ensure that all that material is preserved and cannot be destroyed. As much of that information as possible should be disclosed in the Special Counsel’s upcoming report. Ultimately, Congress should require that all that material be publicly released so all Americans can see Donald Trump for who he genuinely is and fully understand his role in this terrible period in our nation’s history.
Her colleague Adam Kinzinger wrote that Trump’s desire to jail committee members was:
…nothing more than the desperate howl of a man who knows history will regard him with shame. Let me be clear…The January 6 Committee’s work was driven by facts, the Constitution, and the pursuit of accountability — principles that seem foreign to Trump.
Yet the weak-kneed and self-castrated Republican senators seem unlikely to oppose the outrageously unqualified and Trump-sycophanted appointees to head the Justice Department and the FBI. If those nominees prevail, Stalinist show trials are more than likely to occur.
Here in the US. Think about that. What are you willing to do if it comes to that? Think about that, too.
Meanwhile, another election denier nominated…
…this time, to head the civil rights division of the DOJ. In 2020 she was the co-chairwoman of Lawyers for Trump, a group that challenged the results of that year’s presidential election. So a lawyer who was party to a conspiracy to throw out our votes will now be there to “safeguard” our civil rights.
But appointing and elevating such lawyers is not new for the movement conservatives of the GOP…
In 1981, a young lawyer, fresh out of Harvard law school, joined the Reagan administration’s Department of Justice, taking up a cause that had been fomenting in Republican circles for over a decade by that point. From his perch inside the Reagan DOJ, this lawyer would attempt to bring down one of the defining pieces of 20th century legislation—the Voting Rights Act. His name was John Roberts.
Over thirty years later in 2013, these efforts by John Roberts and the conservative legal establishment culminated when Roberts, now Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, wrote Shelby County vs. Holder, one of the most consequential decisions of modern jurisprudence. A dramatic move that gutted the Voting Rights Act, Roberts’s decision—dangerously premised on the flawed notion that racism was a thing of the past—emboldened right-wing, antidemocratic voting laws around the country immediately. No modern court decision has done more to hand elections to Republicans than Shelby. — Antidemocratic: Inside the Far Right's 50-Year Plot to Control American Elections, by David Daley