January 6th: One Year On - Horowitz

January 6th: One Year On - Horowitz

Two days from today marks the one-year anniversary of the attack on our nation’s Capitol. This unprecedented and violent attempt to block the peaceful transfer of power, incited by a president who was using the bully pulpit to repeatedly and falsely claim that the election was stolen, desperately attempting to cling to power by all and any means, makes January 6, 2021, to borrow a phrase from FDR, “a day that will live in infamy.”

Over the past year, more than 725 people have been charged with federal crimes for their roles in the storming of the Capitol, according to statistics released by the US attorney’s office for the District of Columbia (D.C.), which is leading the ongoing investigation. “Approximately 165 individuals have pleaded guilty to a variety of federal charges, from misdemeanors to felony obstruction, many of whom will face incarceration at sentencing,” the DC office wrote. The office documented that 140 police officers were injured that day.

The House select committee investigating January 6 is also now fully ramped up. As reported by The Washington Post, it has already interviewed more than 300 witnesses and obtained more than 35,000 pages of records.  The committee continues to surface and then strategically release new information that is filling in the details and plugging some of the gaps in our understanding of the events leading up to January 6 and the day itself.  Congresswoman Liz Cheney (R-WY), for example, told George Stephanopoulos this past Sunday on his weekly public affairs show that “the committee has firsthand testimony now that [Trump] was sitting in the dining room next to the Oval Office watching the attack on television” and “that his daughter Ivanka went in at least twice to ask him to please stop this violence." This revelation comes on top of the congresswoman recently reading aloud text messages sent by Don Jr. and 3 Fox News hosts-all strong allies of the former president-- to Mark Meadows, his then-chief of staff, urging Mr. Trump to go on television to tell his supporters to stop the attack.

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On Sunday, the vice-chair of the select committee drove home her point, telling Stephanopoulos, "He could have told them to stand down. He could have told them to go home – and he failed to do so. It's hard to imagine a more significant and more serious dereliction of duty than that."

Additionally, the committee is assembling a detailed accounting and timeline of the coordinated attempt by Mr. Trump and his allies in the two months or so between election day and January 6 to overturn the results of a free and fair election.  This determined--if slipshod and desperate-- effort was nothing less than a failed coup attempt.  Upcoming televised hearings conducted by the committee and a comprehensive report it will issue in the summer will serve as a powerful counterpoint of ‘truth” to the former president and his allies’ continuing efforts to flood the country will flagrant falsehoods about the events of that day and the related “Big Lie.”

The results of a new Washington Post-University Maryland Poll underscore the importance of uncovering and communicating to the American people the full story of January 6 and what led up to it.  While 6-out-of-10 Americans overall say Donald Trump bears a “great deal” or “good amount” of responsibility for the attack on the US Capitol, nearly 1-in-2 Republicans say he bears “none at all.”  Similarly, while about 7-in-10 Americans say that Joe Biden was legitimately elected, nearly 6-in-10 Republicans say he wasn’t. Most disturbing, more than 1-in-3 Americans overall and 4-in-10 Republicans say violence against the federal government can at times be justified; this is a big increase in the number of Americans who will not flatly rule out the use of violence.

Given the fact that the current frontrunner for the Republican nomination for president continues to spread falsehoods about January 6 and the 2020 elections and that he has persuaded a majority of Republicans to embrace his “alternate reality"—one unmoored from reality itself—and that some states with large Republican majorities in their state legislatures have passed laws that make it easier for a state legislature to overturn the results of a presidential election, our need to completely understand the insurrection and what led up to it is not just a matter of getting it right for history. It goes to the heart of protecting our democracy.

As Barton Gellman, in a recent article in The Atlantic entitled “Trump’s Next Coup Has Already Begun,” writes, “January 6 was practice. Donald Trump’s GOP is much better positioned to subvert the next election.”  Whether or not Gellman turns out to be prophetic, very much depends on continuing to refute propaganda with “truth” and in instituting reforms at the federal level to safeguard our democracy—ones that ensure the fundamental right of the people to choose their president in elections is not overridden.

The threat to our democracy is all too real. There is nothing more important than confronting it head-on.

 

Rob Horowitz is a strategic and communications consultant who provides general consulting, public relations, direct mail services and polling for national and state issue organizations, various non-profits, businesses, and elected officials and candidates. He is an Adjunct Professor of Political Science at the University of Rhode Island.