After the primary spherical of hearings of the January sixth Committee, crucial takeaway is that the committee has constructed an ironclad case for Trump’s indictment. We’ve now seen irrefutable proof that Trump knew that his calls for on Mike Pence have been unlawful.
All of this could improve the probability that Lawyer Common Merrick Garland will prosecute Trump. In that context, the report late final week that the committee was resisting requests from the Justice Division for transcripts of witness interviews was weird.
It’s comprehensible that the committee wants to finish its personal work. However because the entire level of the committee’s work is to show that Trump broke the legislation and savaged the Structure, a standoff over separation of powers could be self-defeating to say the least. After negotiations, the committee now plans to start sharing transcripts in July.
Extra from Robert Kuttner
The opposite takeaway is the distinction between Republicans within the govt department advising Trump and most Republicans in Congress. The hacks and opportunists whom Trump employed have been removed from constitutional choirboys. However ultimately, almost all have been so appalled by Trump’s narcissistic lunacy that each one however a only a few like John Eastman resisted it.
The Republican Congress, in the meantime, with only a few heroic exceptions like Liz Cheney, defended Trump, and nonetheless does. Within the minds of the framers of the Structure, Congress was to be the department closest to the individuals. And that’s the issue. GOP representatives with little regard for Trump worry offending MAGA voters.
What to do when the poison infects not simply corrupt leaders however the physique politic? Not merely outright neofascist thugs just like the Proud Boys, however their respectable apologists?
There’s a bitterly ironic poem by Bertolt Brecht referred to as “The Resolution.” In 1953, although dwelling in Communist East Berlin, Brecht had little persistence for occasion bureaucrats. Some functionary had expressed disappointment that the individuals have been displaying inadequate enthusiasm for the occasion program. Brecht acidly instructed in his poem that maybe the federal government ought to dissolve the individuals and elect a brand new one.
However the irony is on Brecht—and on us. We don’t get to fireplace the individuals. We have to earn again broad standard assist for constitutional democracy.
That in flip would require not simply exposing the crimes of Donald Trump, however demonstrating that authorities is on the aspect of the individuals and never mega-corporations. If we’re fortunate sufficient to avert outright fascism, will probably be a protracted street again.
