Except people died and the country almost did
Steven A. Engel suppressed a smile during testimony before the House Jan. 6 committee Thursday afternoon. The former United States Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel explained his department’s response to a draft lawsuit sent by President Trump on Dec. 29, 2020. Trump expected the department would file it before the Supreme Court in another of his efforts to reverse his loss in the 2020 election.
For multiple reasons it was “meritless,” Engel explained [timestamp 01:28:34], “not something that the department would bring.” People outside the department had drafted it, delivered it to the president, and the president forwarded it for review.
“Obviously, the person who drafted this lawsuit did not really understand, in my view, the law, and/or how the Supreme Court works, or the Department of Justice. So, it was just not something we would do.”
That was Engel’s polite way of saying the draft was a sad joke. Like the president who sent it.
Testimony Thursday was from Engel, former acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue painted Trump and his allies’ efforts to reverse his loss as a “Harold & Kumar Mount a Coup” farce. Except Trump’s last-ditch effort involved sending an angry mob to assault the Capitol and threaten to murder lawmakers. People died. Well over a hundred police officers were injured in the melee.
Had the violence involved Trump opponents instead, he was prepared to invoke the Insurrection Act and deploy troops to remain in power.
Days ahead of Jan. 6, 2021, “the United States was about one bunch short of becoming a banana republic,” writes Dana Milbank:
Screwballs enabled Trump in Congress, as well. There was Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), whose chief of staff tried to deliver a slate of fake electors to Vice President Mike Pence. And there was Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), who championed Clark for the attorney general job. According to testimony released by the committee Thursday, Perry was among those seeking presidential pardons for their actions, along with Reps. Mo Brooks (Ala.), Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), Louie Gohmert (R-Tex), Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) and possibly Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.). Trump apparently considered blanket pardons for lawmakers and staff involved in the insurrection. At one point, Trump, frustrated that DOJ officials weren’t backing up his lies, urged them: “Just say the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressmen.”
The smell of desperation must have been thick in the Oval Office.
No amount of reason would separate Trump from his debunked “arsenal of allegations,” as Donoghue put it. Ninety minutes after the Jan. 3 White House meeting in which Trump nearly triggered mass resignations, Donoghue’s cellphone rang. “It was the president,” he testified, “and he had information about a truck supposedly full of shredded ballots in Georgia.”
At one point, Trump complained to top DOJ officials: “You guys may not be following the internet the way I do.”
He was right. Only a crackpot would do that.
A dangerous one, one willing, said committee member Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) , “to sacrifice our republic to prolong his presidency. I can imagine no more dishonorable act by a president.”
Kinzinger ended his questioning with a message to fellow members of Congress who abbetted Trump’s “whack-job conspiracy theories” and then requested pardons, “The only reason that I know to ask for a pardon is because you think you have committed a crime.”
Will any of this testimony move public opinion? Possibly. But not among those who would debase themselves and the country like those discussed Thursday. Nor the people of the lie who fed the election conspiracy machine.
“Never in my lifetime would I have imagined a President of the United States doing this,” tweeted Republican former Ohio governor John Kasich Tursday evening. Few other Republicans are prepared to join him.
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