The Existential Insurrection
The J6 Committee sums up its investigation into the attack on the nation’s Capitol.
Day 9 of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the United States Capitol televised hearings.
If you are choking on the phrases political pundits use to describe the attack, January 6. “this was a (an)… fill in the blank,” you are not alone:
the existential insurrection.
If you are distressed by the plausible outcome that the J6 Committee’s work will be rendered into oblivion by a nascent House Republican majority, come November 9, you are not alone. (1)
The appropriate conditional qualifier is not ‘existential:’ some would postulate that “insurrection” is omni-present, on-going.
‘Trump’ is the accelerant.
Such is the context of the Committee’s task: to recommend how America moves forward with the intelligence the Committee has amassed over fifteen months of witness testimony, subpoenaed records and White House communications, before, on and after January 6.
In a way the Committee’s investigation is the largest in US history with a mission to identify domestic terrorism and violent insurrection.
The Committee’s investigation is the largest in US history with a mission to call out an organized syndicate whose intent was to wrest control of the country from elected government officials by violence if necessary.
As Roger Stone put it so eloquently, January 4, “Fuck the voting. Let’s go straight to the violence.” (2)
The public case of “what happened on January 6, 2020” has relied on a supposition that a sitting President is not immune to being tried and convicted for crimes committed while in office.
Remarkably, this premise has not been tested in the history of the US. (3)
Also, untested in the history of the US is the resolve of Congress to hold the Executive branch accountable for planning, organizing and directing an insurrection to block the peaceful transfer of power, in which Congress is written into the Constitution as prime actor, author and officiator.
In the past three plus decades, Congress has ceded political power to the Office of the President and the President has not been shy in claiming it. The pernicious result is that the nation, disdainful of Congress’ inability to govern, has become more divided, and in turn Congressional factions' positions have grown more extreme. Pointing fingers at individual Presidents has not helped America resolve the momentum towards this dangerous concentration of power in the Executive.
Trump has manipulated this momentum and together with Congressional Republicans seeking to dominate political agendas, has expanded a deeper division between parties and as well, has demonstrated a wrecking ball attitude toward governance. It’s not that ‘smaller government’ is preferred, rather for Trump and a cadre of followers, it’s no government at all — at least not the kind that checks their prerogatives.
In America voters do not elect the President of the US. (4) The President is elected by state-authorized electors, the number of which is determined by the sum of the state’s Congressional representatives. All fifty states, except for two, assign their electors’ votes to the winner of the popular election in their state. (5) In Maine and Nebraska, electors are apportioned according to the candidates' popular votes. And this ‘winner take all’ distribution policy — not Constitutional fiat — has been maintained by the party in power, despite many attempts to modify it. In practice, America ends up with a struggle by the party in power to retain executive power, unofficially and despite authorization:
An insurrection of ‘democracy’ by default.
The ‘executed insurrection’ (6) of January 6 was motivated in part by two claims: one, that the 2020 Election was fraudulent; two, that the 2020 Election was stolen.
When 62 cases of alleged 2020 Election result fraud were challenged in court and the courts unanimously upheld the election outcomes, Trump and his allies turned to states such as Arizona, Georgia, and Michigan, where Biden won by a slim but not negligible margin, to get the results overturned.
When this attempt failed, Trump turned to a select number of states, Arizona, Georgia and Pennsylvania, enough to overturn the electoral college result and attempted to insert “fake electors,” who signed affidavits claiming allegiance to Trump. Concurrently, John Eastman, who had represented Trump in some of the failed court cases challenging the election, started looking into Vice President Pence’s authority to decertify the Electoral College results.
The logic behind these stratagems is astounding: 1. If the election were fraudulent then why look at just states where the margin between candidates was slim; why not look at all the states? 2. If the election were stolen, then why look at the states at all? Rather, start with evidence of the “steal.” This is what former personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani and Jeffrey Clark, the AG Trump wanted to install, to replace the acting AG, attempted. Both are awaiting trials.
Anticipating that there are votes in Congress to subpoena Trump, the J6 Committee voted unanimously to take this step. The reasoning behind this decision is new territory for America: indicting a former President for inciting an insurrection to overturn the peaceful transfer of power.
The outcome is less clear and will be likely positioned as a partisan affront: Trump will dismiss answering the subpoena, claiming it is a “witch hunt,” and sue the Committee.
Anticipating the slowness of the courts and the delaying tactics of Trump’s legal team, commentators described the Committee’s subpoena effort as “doing it for history,” hardly the closure America needs. (7)
And there is the possibility of criminal referral to the DOJ. This Committee action will require the cooperation of the DOJ who are conducting their own investigation of J6.
And there is the possibility of disqualifying Trump from running for public office, under the “disqualification clause” of the fourteenth amendment, (8) something Committee Vice-Chair Cheney has hinted at during the hearings. Unlikely, considering the post-November makeup of the House, would such a resolution come from Congress: a two-thirds majority of Congress can remove the disqualification clause, and forty — not 33 percent — of Americans subscribe to the idea that Trump won the election.
America anxiously awaits the direction of AG Merrick Garland and faces a 2022 voting booth crowded with Trump sycophants and election deniers.
For some the J6 Committee Hearings were the most unpopular show in town. America doesn’t like news of political violence, corruption and corrupted institutions.
For some the J6 Committee failed at not reckoning a calculated perfidy to overthrow the government of the US. Understandably, the J6 Committee was hindered by protocol and procedures, which, as an institution, it had already ceded to the Executive Branch and to a constrained view of ‘Constitutional checks and balances.’ And — not to mention — the division within Congress to holding the former President to account.
For most, the J6 Committee revealed that what America can expect will become conflated with what is normal, unless accountability is sustained.
And in this regard the J6 Committee succeeded, stipulating for all, that ‘the rest,’ providing there is a serious democracy left, is up to “us.”
October 14, updated October 15
Notes
2-From video footage, subpoenaed by the Committe and provided by filmaker, Nick Quested, June 10.
3-It defies logic that a candidate for President can run for office while serving jail time, but an elected President cannot be convicted of a crime while in office.
4-America, in this regard, is unique among representative democracies for not providing direct election of the Executive. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/22/among-democracies-u-s-stands-out-in-how-it-chooses-its-head-of-state/ft_16-11-21_headsofstate_map/
5-A proposed amendment to the US Constitution has passed in 26 state legislatures to revise their electoral votes to reflect the winner of the national popular vote.
6-The use of ‘attempted’ to qualify the use of ‘coup,’ and ‘insurrection,’ (“attempted coup,” “attempted insurrection”) precludes examining whether the events of January 6 were planned and directed in any way. IMO, this usage is presumptive, hence, I have chosen the qualifier ‘executed.’
7-Lawrence O’Donnell, MSNBC, “Special Recap of the January 6 Proceedings,” October 13
8-
Disqualification Clause | Constitution Annotated | Congress.gov | Library of Congress
No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
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