The January 6 committee documented Trump’s attempted coup for history

Former Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., and Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., was honored by President Joe Biden with the Presidential Citizens Medal last week. It is the second highest civilian award in the United States, and for the co-chairs of the January 6 committee, it is well-deserved.

However, in an interview with NBC News in December, President-elect Donald Trump promised to pardon the Jan. 6 rioters, saying, “Everybody on that committee … for what they did, well, frankly, they should go to jail.”

The committee may have lost the current political moment, but it did invaluable work in preserving a careful and comprehensive record of Trump’s month-long attempted coup. Shameful as it is that Trump will avoid accountability — and is now empowered to spur bogus investigations of committee members — history should look kindly on the committee’s final report on Jan. 6.

Trump’s return to the White House appears to be a rejection by the American people of the defunct committee’s work. Many Republicans and conservative commentators who four years ago said Trump’s incitement to the mob that attacked the Capitol made him unfit for office have since fallen in line behind the party’s undisputed leader. And it is unlikely that he will ever face a jury of his peers for his attempt to overturn a free and fair election based on lies that — as members of his own administration testified before the committee on Jan. 6 – he knew was a lie.

Although MAGA always positioned the bicameral committee as a “witch hunt” and a “kangaroo court,” the committee’s hearings were both dramatic and sobering. There was harrowing video of the day’s violence, much of it never before shown to the public. And contrary to MAGA’s accusations of a Democratic partisan witch hunt, almost all of the testimony came from former Trump administration officials, other Republicans and police officers who were brutally assaulted by Trump’s mob.

But despite the committee’s name, many of the testimonies had little to do with the January 6 riot itself. Trump’s repeated attempts to bully Republican state officials into overturning the election results were also exhaustively documented.

To cite just one of those officials, Arizona Republican House Speaker Rusty Bowers testified that after refusing to submit to Trump’s demands, he endured a public smear campaign and was harassed in his home. A man turned up at his residence and brandished a gun with his family and neighbors. Bowers called Trump’s attempt to steal the election a “tragic travesty.”

Trump’s attorney general at the time, Bill Barr, told the committee under oath that he informed Trump of his allegations of voter fraud was “bullshit.” Trump’s daughter Ivanka, also under oath, echoed Barr’s assessment of her father’s big lie.

So how has this already been such a thorough memory hole?

As I wrote last month, “Trump’s ‘big lie’ that the 2020 election was stolen has been debunked for years in court and by Republican and Democratic election officials. … But the ‘basic message’ of that lie will never die.” In fact, you could say that the big lie won the election in 2024.”

MAGA-friendly media figures have been hard at work soft-selling January 6th as either a nothingburger or selling the lie that it was actually a crime committed by the Democrats and the “establishment”.

Around the time of last year’s anniversary on January 6, Joe Rogan, Vivek Ramaswamy and other MAGA and “heterodox” influencers spread false insinuations that the January 6 rioters were “caught” or “set up” by a nefarious conspiracy between the FBI, the Capitol Police and Nancy Pelosi. And former anti-Trump conservative have clung to the facile premise that January 6 was just a brief and unfortunate riot – nothing more. This, of course, ignores the months between Election Day and the attack on the Capitol, when Trump absolutely attempted a coup himself.

Despite running a presidential campaign heavy on pitching the (correct) idea that Trump remains a unique threat to the survival of American democracy, Democrats failed to persuade enough voters. That said, 75 million Americans voted for Vice President Kamala Harris and the Trumps around a 1.5 percentage point lead in the referendum was the narrowest margin since the Bush-Gore election in 2000. (In 2016, Hillary Clinton beat Trump by 2.1 percentage points in the popular vote.)

This means that all hope is not lost, that perhaps one day, Americans — perhaps even Republicans — will pass judgment on how it should be remembered as a historic moment for the United States.

I’m a staunch non-partisan independent and not one who regularly (or really ever) praises congressional committees. But as citizens who maintain allegiance to truth, democracy and the rule of law, we owe the January 6 Committee a debt of gratitude for its politically risky and thoroughly patriotic efforts.