January 6 is the day Christians mark the Epiphany, the revelation of Jesus Christ as the son of God. As told in the Bible, three kings brought gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh that day to the infant Jesus in a Bethlehem stable. According to scripture, God made himself known so that people might know him.
One year ago today, thousands of self-proclaimed Christians descended upon the United States Capitol. They were not there to honour the revelation of their heavenly God. Instead they were marching to the drum of their chosen earthly saviour.
Every four years, January 6 is also the day that American presidents are elected. Custom would have us believe this occurs on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November each leap year. That is imprecise. On the November Tuesday that Americans vote for their preferred candidate, they are actually choosing electors pledged to support a nominee for president. These electors, who together comprise the Electoral College, are the middlemen in the process. While their role is typically ceremonial, their votes are anything but.
On the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December, the electors assemble in their respective states to formalise the voters’ intent. Their choices for president and vice-president are recorded on certificates of vote. Each state then sends these certificates to Congress, where they are counted in a joint session of both chambers.
The count happens on January 6.
This timeline is essential to understanding the attack on the Capitol by Donald Trump’s foot soldiers. Many may not have understood why the timeline mattered. However, the people who sent them, and the people who led them into battle, most definitely did.
Their objective that day was simple: stop the count by any means necessary.
Election of a president requires at least 270 Electoral College votes. This represents a majority of the 538 votes available. If no candidate reaches this threshold, the House of Representatives chooses the next president from the three leading candidates. Each state delegation votes as a bloc, with one vote each state.
Had this happened last January, Republicans would have controlled 27 of the 50 state delegations, despite being in the minority overall, and would have returned Trump to the Oval Office. They would have overridden the will of American voters to do so.
This was the plan. Democracy be damned.
Trump and his allies had several contingencies to accomplish their coup. Then-vice-president Mike Pence was to preside over the joint session and supervise the count. The first option relied on Pence to reject electoral votes from several states, leaving Trump ahead albeit short of 270 votes. Then Pence would either declare Trump the victor outright due to his purported lead from accepted votes, or force the House of Representatives to decide. However, Pence had no authority to ignore valid, certified votes. Trump, a man who never met a rule he wouldn’t break, wanted him to do so anyway.
Having explored all avenues in advance to appease Trump, Pence ultimately refused. After four years of unwavering loyalty to his boss, he drew the line at treason.
Trump was outraged. He screamed: “No, no, no! You don’t understand, Mike. You can do this. I don’t want to be your friend any more if you don’t do this.”
Pence was unmoved.
The following day, January 6, Trump dispatched the mob assembled at his rally outside the White House to march on the Capitol. They arrived with a gallows chanting “Hang Mike Pence!” The so-called protest quickly morphed into insurrection as the rioters overwhelmed police and stormed the building. This was no accident. Ringleaders within the crowd knew exactly what to do and where to go. If Pence wouldn’t do Trump’s bidding, they would foil the count themselves.
The rioters overran the Capitol and occupied the Senate floor. They hoped to steal the boxes containing the official votes. That would have thrown the count into chaos, as Trump intended.
Some went prepared to take hostages, and potentially execute members of Congress. In addition to Pence, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez were their prime targets. Had any of them or their colleagues been assassinated, Trump was ready to exploit their murders by declaring a national emergency and sending in the military.
Either stolen votes or an emergency declaration would have given cover for Republicans in the House of Representatives to intervene and retain Trump as president.
This was the plan.
Thanks to quick thinking, fast action, and selfless bravery by congressional members and personnel, the plan failed. Police fought hard against the invaders, delaying their breach and buying time for members and staff to evacuate. Crucially aides carried the mahogany boxes containing the official vote certificates with them. Pence, hunkered down in the bowels of the Capitol, rebuffed Secret Service demands that he be driven to a secure location. Had he left, he might not have been able to return. That could have been used as another pretext to prevent the count.
With no votes to steal, and no officials to take hostage or kill, the insurrection collapsed. Trump was forced to release a mealy-mouthed video urging the rioters to go home. So they did.
Late that night the joint session reconvened to certify the election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Despite all the turmoil and terror of the day, 147 Republicans still played their part with spurious objections to the results. They were all committed to the plan to the bitter end. But the jig was up.
How do we know all this? Because they wrote it down. There was a PowerPoint blueprint mapping out the entire strategy. Trump’s final White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, handed the blueprint to the bipartisan January 6 Committee investigating the insurrection, along with thousands of documents, texts, telephone logs and other data. The committee has made substantial headway towards unravelling the attempted coup. Committee investigators have interviewed more than 300 witnesses, including several implicated in the plot, and have gathered reams of evidence as further proof. Public hearings will be televised in the coming months to reveal the facts to the American public.
It is beyond doubt there was a conspiracy coordinated from the White House to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 election. This treason makes Watergate look like a garden party. Multiple traitors committed federal and state crimes. Many of them will go to prison.
Despite this ocean of treachery, Republicans remain favourites to regain control of the House of Representatives in next November’s midterm elections. They have made plain that they will end all inquiries by the January 6 Committee. This has raised fears that the coup plotters will escape accountability for their crimes.
These concerns are unnecessary. Committee members are well aware of the ticking political clock. We can expect they will conclude their probe and issue their report before year’s end. In any case, the committee has no power to lay criminal charges. However, it can refer findings to the Department of Justice (DOJ) with recommendations for prosecution. This it will certainly do. If Republicans shut down the committee, DOJ will still have at least two years to prosecute the offenders.
After the November 2020 election, Trump blocked the normal transition process from one administration to the next, even though the law required it. Deploying his usual modus operandi when violating laws, his approach was to dare anyone to do anything about it. At the time most people chalked it up to petulance. Everyone knew Trump was a sore loser. The reality was far worse. He obstructed the transition because he wasn’t going anywhere.
Trump committed a monstrous crime. For that he needed a monstrous justification to incite his supporters. Thus was born his Big Lie that the election had been stolen.
When the whole truth is laid bare, let’s hope some of Trump’s supporters have an epiphany of their own.
And this attempt to overthrow democracy was supported by Australia’s dominant media player, News Corporation, whose US arm, Fox News, are still repeating Trump’s ‘Big Lie’ and agitating for a more comprehensive overthrow of democracy in 2024.
It would seem to me, at some distance thankfully, that the famed United States are unravelling. Their empire has reached maximal expansion, and when an empire cannot grow, the cost of ownership becomes an unbearable burden. With no new conquests to enslave and plunder, the imperial centre begins to devour its own flesh. In the United States this process began after the defeat in Vietnam and has been accelerating ever since.
One of the recent President Trump’s campaign promises was to end the forever wars. While the worst burden of these cruel wars has been borne by the peoples or Asia, Africa, and Central and South America, (upon whom they have been waged), the heaviest cost in American lives and bodies and minds has been borne by the denizens of small-town America: Hilary Clinton’s deplorables and a key demographic in the first Trump campaign. All across those increasingly impoverished villages and towns are young men and women missing limbs and senses and afflicted with frightful, inescapable memories of carnage and brutality and terror. The secure jobs, and perceived status, and belief in a prosperous future which once characterised these communities are now a memory. The future looks anything but bright. It is hardly to be wondered at that a goodly portion of that community believe they have been robbed. Neither is it to be wondered at that they now pay no heed to the same “news” media which promised them a war on terror and weapons of mass destruction, and which now tells them that their champion was defeated in an election.
Not wars, in fact just US ,military adventuress as no war declared by the Congress of the USA
The Afghan Imbroglio, The Iraq Fiasco like The Viet Nam Farrago were all US military adventures that started under Republican Administrations….
The Viet Nam Farrago in 1955 when Eisenhower deployed the Military Assistance Advisory Group to train the Army of the Republic of Vietnam. This marks the official beginning of American involvement, as recognised by the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
The Afghan Imbroglio, ending finally in its 20th year, was initiated by the previous Republican encumbrance in the White House Dubya The Faux Texan and NeoCon Sock Puppet.
Closely followed by The Iraq Fiasco, which clearly led to The Da’esh Disaster. which furthermore led to Da’esh fighters moving into Afghanistan, adding yet another group of Islamist to the toxic mix in that country.
Regretfully, and only under the Lying Nasty Party Australia has marched off lock step on these military adventures, again no war declared by the Parliament of the C of A …none of which concerned the defence of Australia.
Die Geschichte hat noch nie etwas anderes gelehrt, als dass die Menschen nichts aus ihr gelernt haben.”. Georg Frederich Hegel
History has never taught anything other than that people have learned nothing from it
and even more apposite now…
“Er hat vergessen, hinzuzufügen: das eine Mal als Tragödie, das andere Mal als Farce.” Karl Marx
He, (Hegel,) forgot to add this: first as tragedy, second as farce:
And now Oberst-Gruppenführer Kartoffelkopf is talking up joining a war against China, what a farce that is!
Great article. Thanks for the logical approach and excellent analysis.
To win the mid terms, Dems need to play ball and repeat this evidence out in the public forums, social media and advertising, saturating
the notion to voters that ” Republicans are undemocratic treasonous criminals”.
Given that voting is not compulsory and the massive gerrymandering in the US – it’s a big ask.
It’s also extremely ironic that the Republicans undertook a Civil War to keep the US united; now they’re doing everything they can to split the country for purely selfish sectional interests. If only they could clone Abraham Lincoln- but they’d probably just assassinate him again.
It was only at the start of the 20th century that the (Democratic) party of small government became the party of big government, and the (Republican) party of big government became rhetorically committed to curbing federal power.
A highly influential Democrat named William Jennings Bryan (best known for negotiating a number of peace treaties at the end of the First World War) blurred party lines by emphasizing the government’s role in ensuring social justice through expansions of federal power — traditionally, a Republican stance.
The turn-of-the-century Democrats started advocating for big government because they, like Republicans, were trying to win the West. The admission of new western states to the union in the post-Civil War era created a new voting bloc, and both parties were vying for its attention.
Republican federal expansions in the 1860s and 1870s had turned out favorable to big businesses based in the northeast, such as banks, railroads and manufacturers, while small-time farmers like those who had gone west received very little.
Both parties tried to exploit the discontent this generated, by promising the general public some of the federal help that had previously gone to the business sector. From this point on, Democrats stuck with this stance — favoring federally funded social programs and benefits — while Republicans were gradually driven to the counterposition of hands-off government.
From a business perspective the loyalties of the parties did not really switch. “Although the rhetoric and to a degree the policies of the parties do switch places,” historian Rauchway wrote, “their core supporters don’t — which is to say, the Republicans remain, throughout, the party of bigger businesses; it’s just that in the earlier era bigger businesses want bigger government and in the later era they don’t.”
For a couple of decades in the early 20th century, both parties were promising an augmented federal government devoted in various ways to the cause of social justice
Only gradually did Republican rhetoric drift towards the counterarguments. The party’s small-government platform cemented in the 1930s with its heated opposition to Roosevelt’s New Deal.
Trump should have been charged with treason. That he wasn’t, bodes Ill for The US version of democracy, He was the centre of the storm and just charging his demented minions is a travesty of justice.
We will see what happens in the next year. The US has a double jeopardy system. Get the charging or the prosecution wrong, and he walks away an “innocent” man. Whether the charge is treason or otherwise, the DoJ needs to get its ducks in a row, prove the case, and convict. If that takes a couple of years, it is better than rushing the charges, or a case, and having it fail. The January 6th Commission is still, within the last week, receiving information and leads from former Trump aides and White House staff. A lot of information has been assembled, a lot more information would probably not have been made public at this point, and fresh information is *still* coming forward. There is time and evidence to make a strong valid case.
Ironically those strongly involved in the coup attempt are so confident that they are spouting out information not only to the in-house far right media that supports them unquestioningly, but also to the more main stream centrist / centre left media. This interview with Peter Navaro by Ari Melber on MSNBC last week, is fascinating appalling and enlightening:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTu5HVFa8CU
I would assume that could be used as evidence. Navaro actually felt that the rioters stuffed up the plan to keep hold of power.
Even with a successful prosecution of Trump, the fact that one of the two main political parties is actively undermining democracy at federal, state and grass roots levels (look into what is happening with school boards all over the USA, including violence and stalking against sitting board members until they resign and can be replaced by far right radicals aligned with the Repunlican Party), US democracy is under much deeper threat than just Trump and Trumpism.
Our democratic system is fairer here in Australia, but we need to be alert to all attacks on it (and there have been a few in the last year or two). We either protect our democracy or head into a potential authoritarian future like several countries currently are (including the US).