![]() They wore tactical gear and were heavily armed. They were formal members of supremacist paramilitaries, of right wing “militias,” who’d trained and practiced for just such an opportunity - to bring down the government, violently. The Committee, too, did stellar work in establishing this crucial fact as well: those weren’t “tourists,” and they were hardly just disgruntled farmers, either. The next stage was to establish that Jan 6th was made of no mere rabble, no mere spontaneous upwelling of justified anger, but something darker, too: a true hard coup attempt, made of armed paramilitaries, fanatics, led by extremists, itself planned and organized. So Jan 6th was no mere “riot” - but a link in a larger plan. And while it might have even been obvious, it’s crucial that such facts become part of the formal political record - as we’re going to shortly see. The Committee did stellar work establishing all that. #Far beyond the shadows of doubt seriesAll that was exactly what happened on Jan 6th, and in the months leading up to it: a long series of baseless legal challenges, then attempts to intimidate and pressure figures charged with certifying and counting votes (“I’m just looking for 11,000 votes!”), then fake slates of electors - and when all that wasn’t enough, finally, Jan 6th itself. First come the legal challenges, then the procedural attacks, and when all that doesn’t work, usually finally, as all that fails, there’s a bloody, violent attempt by the autocrat’s forces, on the seat of democracy itself. To put it even more precisely, the culmination of a series of coup attempts, which, following the usual pattern of autocrats, go from soft to hard. In other words, Jan 6th really was a coup attempt. And so the Jan 6th Committee’s first job was to establish that, no this was no mere “riot.” It was something far, far darker: as they put it, a “sophisticated, multi-part plan” with the aim of thwarting the peaceful transfer of power. American media had spent quite a while falling for the oldest trick in the book - “It was just a tourist visit!” cried the fanatics, and so pundits replied, “no it wasn’t! It was a riot!” LOL, job done, catastrophe minimized, Big Lie spread. What do I mean? What’s the coup de grace? The Committee began by summarizing its case to date. What happened at yesterday’s hearing was a remarkable series of moments - whose cut and thrust were to begin to finally do real justice for the indignities and abuses of the Trump Years. A punishing, final blow in the case against Donald Trump - and in defense of American democracy. It might not seem like it, but the Jan 6th Committee just delivered its coup de grace. ![]()
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