Did you watch the J6 Committee Hearings yesterday? You should have. Because they went from explosive — to sealing their place in history. Something genuinely remarkable happened at yesterday’s hearings. Something that will have profound consequences going forward.
At the first hearing, the Committee methodically laid out what are essentially a set of charges. A sitting President was “at the center” of a “conspiracy” which had a “sophisticated, multi-part” plan to attempt a coup and overturn an election. Whew.
It’s not almost as if they were reading from my posts — they literally said the same thing, verbatim. Attempted coup, sophisticated plan, overturn an election. In some sense, every intelligent person and commentator — me, Sarah Kendzior, our loyal and thoughtful readers — were saying just the same, and more. And it should be noted that this interpretation of events was completely counter to the story much of the formal American media presented — they told the story that it was a “riot,” which implies the opposite of a sophisticated plan, an attempted coup, a conspiracy — just a spontaneous, fleeting, bottom-up expression of frustration. Wrong.
Even a Congressional Committee — the gentlest and most theatrical political institution there is — concluded exactly what we did. For a Congressional Committee to use the precise, exact same terminology, ideas, language, and concepts that we have — the ones who’ve been derided as being wrong or exaggerating over and over again says something. Many things. It’s not just about point scoring, though of course it is about that, because, well, the job of talking and thinking well about events this grave is to get the story right. Still, the point is about how much danger American democracy was — and is — in.
Because it’s not as if the coup attempts have stopped. They’ve just morphed into a different form, which is Bannon’s war — seizing control of democracy at a local level, of everything from electors to officials who certify and count votes. That’s because the last attempt didn’t work. The point is to stop this rolling, ongoing coup. How do we do that?
Yesterday, the Committee went even further — and what it did will probably seal its place in the history books. The Committee revealed to the nation and to the world that it had got Trump’s very own lieutenants to turn on him. That they’d got them to scurry like rats, off a sinking ship, and cling to whatever debris of the wreckage was left in the cold, cold water — and hang on to it and squeal for dear life.
The Committee got Trump’s own lieutenants to turn on him. This is alternately funny, sad, ridiculous, and predictable. It tells us that the former Prez is no Al Capone or John Gotti. He’s not even El Chapo. He was the head of perhaps the dumbest mafia in history, it appears now. What do I mean by that?
The list of rats — and I mean that word in many senses, from the prison informant to the trash-dwelling one — who turned on Trump is a long one. The Committee began with a former Fox News figure, a senior one. He pointed out that even Fox had called the election for Biden — yet Trump still didn’t appear to believe it. The Committee was making the point that Trump was now deep in the weeds of believing his own lies — or at least acting upon them. But as far as rats go, this poor Fox News guy was just a little baby, even cute and funny. Then came the King Rats.
The Committee turned to Bill Stepien, Trump’s former campaign manager. He, too, vehemently asserted, with a look of weary despair, that he’d tried to warn Trump, too. He’d lost the election. There was no evidence that any of the wild tales he kept on pressing his team to investigate were true — fantastical stories about how the vote had been stolen. Stepien recounted in painstaking detail how he’d try to convince the President that the election hadn’t gone his way.
Then came an bigger rodent — Bill Barr. Trump’s former Attorney General. He said the same thing as Stepien, only in even more painstaking — and this time, surreal — detail. What about the alleged “truck” full of “stolen votes”? The “suitcase”? What about the “mules” delivering stolen votes across the nation? All false. Barr had investigated these claims, it turns out, and told Trump they were all false.
Think of the gravity of this for a second, because it’s easy not to see it. An Attorney General…testifying against his own President. That the vote that President had claimed was illegitimate was in fact legitimate. And that all the statements that President was now issuing in public, more and more angrily each day — they stole the vote from us, we won, and so forth — were false.
I don’t think that’s ever happened in American history before. It’s a genuinely historic event. When has an Attorney General — the government’s top law enforcement official — ever said to a President that no laws were broken, and the President went out and claimed to the whole nation that they were, in massive ways, like stealing a vote, anyways? In order to try and overturn an election?
And it’s hard to even read all that well, because, well, it contains so much. Like what? Well, like at the end of the day, these aren’t good guys doing the right thing. It’s easy to laud Barr and Stepien and their ilk — but the truth is that these are terrible, horrible, awful people.
Stepien helped Trump run a campaign based on the most hateful kind of demagoguery, Big Lies, scapegoating, a campaign which is still ripping America apart. “They stole the election from us!” was preceded by the idea, of course, that “they” aren’t real Americans — women, gays, immigrants, dirty liberals like you and me. “They” are subhumans, the enemy, untrue of faith, impure of blood. America belongs to “us” — MAGA. Stepien agreed to help Trump get re-elected knowing full well what kind of man he was. What does that say about him?
Barr was probably the worst Attorney General in American history. He presided over everything from covering up Trump’s excesses to justifying his worst abuses of power. “Barr’s resignation letter, in fact, reminds us of his original sin: covering up the Trump campaign’s cooperation (if not collusion) with Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 election, which Barr referred to as “the effort to cripple, if not oust your administration with frenzied and baseless accusations.” Or try this on for size: “That was, of course, far from the only case of Barr acting like Trump’s personal attorney rather than the attorney general of the United States. Barr also dropped the case against Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who had pled guilty to federal crimes.”
None of that’s bad enough? Barr was literally personally responsible for some of the Trump era’s worst, most shocking, disgusting moments. Like what? “Barr also personally ordered the violent dispersal of lawful protestors from Lafayette Park in Washington so that Trump could do a photo-op in the midst of the George Floyd protests.” Remember those protests? People were violently abused, tear-gassed, and if I recall correctly, abducted by weirdly sinister figures in black shoving them into unmarked vans.
Who wrote these lines? “Secularists, and their allies among the ‘progressives,’ have marshaled all the force of mass communications, popular culture, the entertainment industry, and academia in an unremitting assault on religion and traditional values.” Bill Barr did. LOL — an Attorney General of a democracy attacking secularism. Outlining the conspiracy theory that “real Americans” are suffering a great replacement, basically. In any other rich democracy, it’d be ludicrous. In America, he became the head of the judiciary.
These are horrible, terrible, awful people. They are some of the worst people on earth. They played a key role in trying to destroy a democracy. You don’t help Trump try to get re-elected for no reason. You don’t act as his lackey and enabler just because you’re a fool. They knew exactly what they were doing. And that was attempting to use democracy to impose a kind of theocratic authoritarianism on America. There would be just one way to live, one way to express yourself, one way to exist. The hate was open, the scapegoating omnipresent, and figures like Barr and Stepien weren’t silent partners in it, holding their noses — they were active participants, smearing the filth all over the rest of us.
They were profoundly, deeply complicit.
And yet the Committee turned them. Why? How? For a very, very simple reason. They’re trying to save their own skins now. Hey, who tried to do this…terrible thing? You know, the “conspiracy” born of a “sophisticated, multi-part plan” to “overturn an election” by way of an “attempted coup”?
Not us!! Ah, Jesus — it wasn’t us!!!
That’s why Barr and Stepien turned. Because the language the Committee is using now — conspiracy, plan, coup — this is the language of criminal charges. The Committee is, in plain sight, throwing down a gauntlet to Merrick Garland’s Justice Department — slow, lumbering, a scared giant — and daring it not to act. Using precisely that language, those terms, in these depositions, sent the very, very clear to message to Barr and Stepien that this was for real. Their lawyers must have said — hey, you’d better cooperate, or else. Or else what? Be charged, possibly, with being part of the most damaging conspiracy in American history. Want that? Want to stare down the Justice Department over that issue? Be charged with RICO? And not for running a bit of drugs up from South America or Mexico — but for something way, way, way worse than that?
Want even a 5% chance that hangs over you for the rest of your life? Enjoy being bankrupt, unemployable, and in prison?
That’s why Trump’s lieutenants became rats. I gave you two examples above, but there were many more. Jason Miller — Trump’s Senior Campaign Advisor. Richard Donoghue — Former Acting Attorney General. All of them said the same thing. Hey, it wasn’t us!! Noooo — don’t get us!! We tried to stop it!!! Please, we weren’t part of the conspiracy!! Here, we’ll turn and be on your side!
It’s remarkable just how many of Trump’s lieutenants the Committee turned. So far, it’s gotten to most of his key enablers. And that tells us something.
How do mafias work? Why are they traditionally so hard to break? Well, they have a rule of omertà, a code of silence. And that code of silence is enforced by two things. Severe punishments for breaking it — imagine what violence the drug cartels do to informants, to send a message. And steep rewards for enacting it — think of the way mafias take care of their own in prison, for staying mum.
Now, here’s the funny part of all the above. The former President appears to have thought that he was the Godfather. That his lieutenants wouldn’t turn. That he’d get away with it all, scot-free. The Committee appears to have turned them with relative ease. It appears not to have had a single problem scaring the life out of these awful, terrible people — Barr, Stepien, Miller — so fast that they can’t sing high, loud, or fast enough. Things are so funnily bad for them that they’re desperate to be rats.
Why is that? Because the former President isn’t just a terrible businessman, it turns out he’s a terrible mafia boss, too. He’s not Pablo Escobar or El Chapo — he couldn’t really threaten the kinds of punishments real mafias use to enforce codes of silence. All he really had was money and power to throw around. And he was so legendarily narcissistic selfish and greedy, he was renowned for stiffing people on his own team. He didn’t even share the wealth enough with his own goons for them not to turn into rats. LOL.
Like I said, it’s funny when you think about it.
This is historic work the Committee’s doing. There are those who say it’s purely performative, and I think that’s not quite correct. It is theatrical, true. The Committee’s powers are limited. They are using them as seriously as they can. They have got the lieutenants to desperately turn tail and become rats precisely by sending the message that real consequences are very, very possible here. That job is up to Bill Barr’s replacement, Merrick Garland. It’s true that another path could have been chosen here — like a special process of justice. Perhaps that will prove to be the case, if charges are never brought.
But every hearing, the Committee is making an incredibly powerful statement. This case must be tried. These are the men and women who tried to destroy American democracy. The rats, their kings, and their emperor. Now that we understand who they really are, and what they tried to do to this nation, let us judge who will be held accountable for what, and charge them with what they deserve.
This is history, my friends. And for a change, it’s nice to see it happening democracy’s way.
