Hearings televised by the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol have made some things abundantly clear.
The attack on the U.S. Capitol that occurred Jan. 6, 2021, and viewed live by people across the world was committed by followers of Donald John Trump. The perpetrators were not antifascists. They were not masquerading as Trump supporters. They were diehard Trump followers.
Trump’s supporters gathered in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6 because he summoned them. They did not gather spontaneously. They did not gather because people other than Trump invited them. Trump summoned his followers to Washington Jan. 6, knowing that was the day Congress would certify the Electoral College tally from the November 2020 presidential election that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won and he and Mike Pence lost.
Trump summoned his followers to Washington by falsely alleging he won the 2020 presidential election. He claimed the popular vote was a fraud. He claimed the presidential electors from swing states Biden won had been fraudulently certified by their respective states. His campaign and private attorneys filed scores of meritless lawsuits to challenge the vote tally. Judges dismissed the lawsuits because they were based on unsubstantiated allegations of fraud.
Nevertheless, Trump summoned his followers to Washington for the Jan. 6 event by falsely calling it a “Stop the Steal” rally.
Trump tried to overthrow the Constitution of the United States. He summoned, incited, directed and tried to join his followers to attack the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 as Mike Pence and Congress discharged their duty to certify the 2020 presidential electoral count.
During the weeks before Jan. 6, Trump personally tried to bully and to persuade state and federal officials to disregard the popular vote tallies in swing states:
- He phoned state officials in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan and Pennsylvania and falsely claimed the vote margins in those states for Biden were based on fraud.
- His attorneys made public statements and filed lawsuits making the same false assertions.
- Former Attorney General William Barr told Trump and other governmental officials the claims about voter fraud were baseless.
- Nevertheless, Trump’s surrogates recruited, enabled and supplied alternate slates of electors with documents that falsely identified them as the actual electors from their states.
- Some of Trump’s Republican allies attempted to get the alternate slate of electors to Vice President Pence on and before Jan. 6 to create a misimpression that the integrity of the electoral count was disputed.
- Trump tried to bully Pence into asserting the power to reject the certified electors from Arizona, Georgia, Michigan and Pennsylvania. He did so for days before Jan. 6. During the early morning hours of that day, Trump used Twitter to falsely tell his followers Pence had the power to reject the electors and to not certify the electoral count.
- Trump tried to interfere with the internal operation of the Justice Department and install sycophants who would carry out his wishes to remain in office contrary to the election result. Jeffrey Clark and Sidney Powell were willing to do his bidding, but other lawyers in the Justice Department and the White House staunchly opposed Trump’s aim and those efforts.
Thousands of Donald Trump supporters gather outside the U.S. Capitol building following a “Stop the Steal” rally on January 6, 2021, in Washington, D.C. A large group of protesters stormed the historic building, breaking windows and clashing with police. Trump supporters had gathered in the nation’s capital to protest the ratification of President-elect Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory over President Trump in the 2020 election. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
Trump knew some of his followers at the Jan. 6 rally carried weapons, including firearms. He railed at his staff and demanded mobile magnetometers placed at entrances to the rally be removed so his weapon-wielding followers could enter the rally. Trump delivered incendiary remarks about Pence and members of Congress to his followers during the rally and then told them to march to the Capitol, where he would join them.
The January 6 Committee presented testimony from Cassidy Hutchinson, the assistant to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. Her testimony established that, as president of the United States, Donald Trump incited an armed crowd of his followers. He aimed that irate and weaponized crowd at the Capitol and told them to “fight like hell.” When he did so, Trump knew Pence, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the leaders of the Senate, and members of both Houses of Congress were meeting to certify the electoral count.
When Trump’s Secret Service detail refused to drive him to the Capitol, Trump tried to wrest control of his limousine. After Trump was physically restrained from doing so, he attempted to assault a member of his security detail. When Trump returned to the White House following his speech, he hurled his lunch, shattering a bottle of tomato ketchup on the wall.
Law enforcement officers attempt to block rioting supporters of Donald Trump from breeching the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (via CBS News)
Then Trump sat in his private dining room for three hours and watched Fox News coverage of the brutal attack on the Capitol by his followers. During the attack, Trump issued a Tweet that accused Pence of lacking courage to suspend the electoral count.
Trump refused to call off his followers as they broke through police barricades and assaulted Capitol Police. He refused to direct civilian law enforcement and military units to defend the Capitol, protect Pence and Congress and repel the insurrectionists. While his armed followers invaded, defaced and occupied the Capitol, shouting their aim to find, capture and harm Pence and members of Congress, Trump watched Fox News and waited while both chambers of Congress were forced to suspend proceedings.
After Pence and Congressional leaders managed to summon military units to the Capitol — because Trump had refused to do so — Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump and other White House staff finally persuaded him to issue a video directing his followers to leave the Capitol. He reluctantly did so. Outtakes from the video show Trump refusing to say the election was over, beating the podium and refusing to deliver remarks that had been prepared by his staff.
Trump tried to overthrow the U.S. Constitution. He summoned, incited, directed and tried to join his followers to attack the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 as Pence and Congress discharged their duty to certify the 2020 presidential electoral count.
Trump has been exposed for who he always has been. His presidency and continued political viability expose the moral and ethical deceitfulness of white Christian nationalists, Republican sycophants, and their financiers and apologists.
Trump’s words and actions caused people to break laws; engage in physical violence against Capitol Police, resulting in multiple injuries and several deaths; invade the Capitol; ransack offices; and carry out a violent search for Pence and members of Congress.
He did not try to stop the violence. Trump instigated it, stoked it, aimed it, tried to join it and then sulked like a spoiled brat when White House staff prevented him from doing so.
On Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021, a man holds a Bible as Trump supporters gather outside the Capitol in Washington. The Christian imagery and rhetoric on view during the Capitol insurrection sparked renewed debate about the societal effects of melding Christian faith with an exclusionary breed of nationalism. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)
Trump is a sociopath. He is a brat, bully, liar and rogue whose sociopathy was well known before he became president of the United States.
As president, Trump praised white supremacists who attacked nonviolent protestors in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017 and called them “fine people.”
As president, Trump ordered an air strike in January 2020 that resulted in the killing of Major Gen. Qasem Soleimani of the Iranian military.
As president, Trump railed at city and state leaders to “get tough” with protestors after George Floyd was murdered in 2020.
As president, Trump staged a photo op after federal agents physically attacked unarmed nonviolent Black Lives Matter protestors gathered in Lafayette Park near the White House after Floyd’s murder.
Trump, a septuagenarian sociopath, bigot, brat, bully, liar, misogynist, racist and vicious rogue, directed the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
This is the character white Christian nationalists — who claim to be followers of Jesus — cheered, supported and elected president of the United States in 2016.
This is the character Republicans in Congress and in state and local political offices across the United States praised.
This is the character who nominated Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett to become Justices of the Supreme Court.
Trump has been exposed for who he always has been. His presidency and continued political viability expose the moral and ethical deceitfulness of white Christian nationalists, Republican sycophants, and their financiers and apologists.
The world is waiting for Americans to treat Trump like he is a criminal and to condemn people who have enabled, supported and endorsed his criminality. Have you done so yet?
Why not?
Wendell Griffen is an Arkansas circuit judge and pastor of New Millennium Church in Little Rock, Ark.
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