David Remnick writes about the historic significance of the House Select Committee’s January 6th report, and why it’s vital that we engage with its findings.
The New Yorker is publishing the full report of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack, in partnership with Celadon Books. The edition contains a foreword by the magazine’s editor, David Remnick, which you’ll find below, and an epilogue by Representative Jamie Raskin, a member of the committee.
The committee was not alone in its investigation. Many journalists contributed to the steady accretion of facts. But, with the power of subpoena, the committee was able to uncover countless new illuminating details. One example: In mid-December, 2020, the Supreme Court threw out a lawsuit filed by the State of Texas that would have challenged the counting of millions of ballots. Trump, of course, supported the suit. He was furious when it, like dozens of similar suits, was dismissed.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi then asked the Republicans to name G.O.P. members to join the panel. The House Minority Leader, Kevin McCarthy, responded by proposing some of the most prominent election deniers in his caucus, including Jim Jordan, of Ohio, who had attended “Stop the Steal” demonstrations and was sure to behave as an ardent obstructionist.
The political urgency of the committee’s work was geared to the calendar. Members had initially hoped to complete and publish a report before the 2022 midterm elections. But that proved impossible, such was the volume of evidence. Still, the committee members knew they could not go on indefinitely.
To help with that effort, the committee hired an adviser, the British-born television producer James Goldston, who had been a foreign correspondent for the BBC in Northern Ireland and Kosovo. Goldston had also covered the impeachment of Bill Clinton. In 2004, he moved to New York and went to work at ABC, where he ran “Good Morning America” and “Nightline”; between 2014 and 2021, he served as president of ABC News.
Anyone who watched the hearings and who now reads this report will dwell at times on the outsized figures who emerge, either in their own testimony or as described by others: the neo-fascistic campaign strategist and onetime White House aide Steve Bannon; the blandly ambitious Mark Meadows, the chief of staff in the final year of the Trump Administration; and, of course, the oft-inebriated Rudy Giuliani, the onetime New York City mayor and Trump’s personal lawyer.
Finally, Hutchinson made it clear just how much Trump had wanted to join the insurrectionists on Capitol Hill. Trump was so incensed with his Secret Service detail for refusing to take him there, she testified, that he lunged at the agent driving his car and struggled for the wheel. The report corroborates Hutchinson’s testimony, saying that the “vast majority” of its law-enforcement sources described a “furious interaction” between the President and his security contingent in his S.U.V.
A civil war, in the nineteenth-century understanding of the term, is not at hand. But what makes the events of January 6, 2021, so alarming is that they were inspired and incited by the President of the United States, Donald Trump, who remains popular among so many Republicans and a contender to return to the White House.
Clinton won the popular vote by a margin of more than two per cent, but, because she fell well short in the Electoral College, there was no compulsion on Trump’s part to consider extralegal action. But four years later, as Trump lagged behind Joe Biden in the polls, he revived the theme. “MILLIONS OF MAIL-IN BALLOTS WILL BE PRINTED BY FOREIGN COUNTRIES, AND OTHERS,” he tweeted. “IT WILL BE THE SCANDAL OF OUR TIMES!” Once more, Trump refused to promise a peaceful transfer of power.
On November 7th, the Associated Press, Fox News, and, soon, all the other major news outlets called Pennsylvania, and the election, for Biden. The battleground states—Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia, Arizona, and Wisconsin—all went Biden’s way, and, in the end, he won 306 electoral votes to Trump’s 232. In his victory speech, the President-elect said, “It’s time to put away the harsh rhetoric. To lower the temperature.
On the night of January 5th, the President met with Pence at the White House and tried to pressure him into adopting the scheme that Eastman had devised. For years, Pence had been the most loyal of deputies, never daring to challenge the falsehoods or the cruelties of his master. Trump, after all, had rescued him from political oblivion. But Pence would not go along with the plot. His job on January 6th, he told the President, was ceremonial. He was only there “to open envelopes.
For Trump, the choice was simple. The insurrectionists were his people, his shock troops, there to do his bidding. Nothing about the spectacle seemed to disturb him: not the gallows erected outside the building, not the savage beatings, not threats to Pence and Pelosi, not graffiti like “Murder the Media,” not the chants of “1776! 1776!” And so he ignored calls to action even from his own party.
United States Latest News, United States Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
You’re Subpoenaed to the January 6th Committee Holiday PartyParty festivities will include Pin the Subpoena on the Donkey, Two Truths and a Third Truth Because You’re Under Oath, and Would You Rather (Coöperate or Be Indicted).
Read more »
Singer Byul to release her 6th full album in January | allkpopSinger Byul is returning with a full album release for the first time in 14-years!According to Byul's agency Quan Entertainment on December 23, By…
Read more »
Jan. 6 panel prepares to unveil final report on insurrection“The central cause of January 6th was one man, former President Donald Trump, who many others followed,” reads the report from the House Jan. 6 committee. “None of the events of January 6th would have happened without him.”
Read more »
Jan. 6 panel prepares to unveil final report on insurrection“The central cause of January 6th was one man, former President Donald Trump, who many others followed,” reads the report from the House Jan. 6 committee.
Read more »
Jan. 6 witness recounts pressure campaign from Trump alliesBREAKING: Closed-door testimony to the House Jan. 6 committee that's just been made public shows how a former White House aide described a wide-ranging pressure campaign from allies of Donald Trump aimed at influencing her cooperation with Congress.
Read more »
6th-grader in custody, police say loaded 9mm found in school backpackAnother student reported to school officials that the fellow student — an 11-year-old — had what was believed to be a BB gun to school. Administrators located the student suspect and found a loaded…
Read more »