How Trump’s repulsive new attack on the Jan. 6 probe could do lasting damage
It’s bad enough that Donald Trump has successfully required Republicans to maintain absolute fealty to the mythology that his conduct on Jan. 6 was beyond reproach. This will make a true national reckoning with that day far harder. But it gets worse: This could also make reforms to prevent a future Jan. 6 less likely, with terrible long-term consequences.
Trump has instructed several of his top advisers to defy subpoenas from the House select committee examining the insurrection. A letter from his lawyer declares that Trump-related information sought by the committee is shielded “from disclosure by the executive and other privileges.”
On Friday, we will likely learn that the Trump advisers — which include Stephen K. Bannon, Mark Meadows and Dan Scavino — will largely not comply. The committee has subpoenaed them related to communications with Trump about Jan. 6 and knowledge of Trumpworld’s scheming to subvert the count of presidential electors in Congress.
Story continues below advertisement
On a separate track, congressional Democrats are now seriously examining reforms to the Electoral Count Act (ECA), Democratic aides confirm to me. The serious ambiguities in that arcane 1887 law, which sets procedures for counting electors in Congress, are precisely what Trump tried to exploit, arguably leading to the riot.
These two developments are set to collide with each other.
First let’s note we don’t know if those Trump advisers will succeed in defying subpoenas. As Norman Eisen points out, a combination of factors — court decisions strengthening Congress’s hand in oversight and executive privilege battles, the apparent willingness of the committee to aggressively enforce subpoenas — suggests they might not.
Story continues below advertisement
But either way, Trump’s demand is truly repulsive. He will do everything in his power to keep buried his incitement of the worst outbreak of U.S. political violence in modern history, as well as his extensive efforts to overturn democracy that led up to it, even as he enforces orthodoxy among Republicans that the only victims on that day were Trump supporters.
But that aside, these escalating attacks on the committee will make ECA reform harder to achieve.
Here’s why. As the committee bears down on the truth, Republicans will be even more obliged to treat Jan. 6 as a nonevent being hyped by Trump’s enemies. It will grow even harder to acknowledge that it was a grave national event with profound long-term implications, one requiring a serious national reckoning and response.
Story continues below advertisement
The push for ECA reform should derive its energy in part from that latter notion. But if this cause gets associated with Enemies of Trump — with the idea that Jan. 6 portends an enduring threat to democratic stability, and that we should act on this — it may grow harder for even non-Trumpy Republicans to associate themselves with it.
Reform is on the agenda
Things are moving: Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) is talking to other House Democrats about introducing an ECA reform bill soon. In a letter circulating among Democrats, Lofgren notes that Jan. 6 reveals “serious flaws” in the ECA, and frames reform as central to ensuring future “orderly and peaceful transfers of power.”
Story continues below advertisement
This legislation would seek to fix some deep ECA ambiguities that Trump tried to exploit. The very belief that overturning the election in Congress was possible gave life to the “Stop the Steal” rally and led Trump to incite the mob to intimidate his vice president and lawmakers to carry that out.
And so, a source tells me, Democrats are discussing ways to clarify in legislation that the vice president’s role in counting electors is purely ceremonial (Trump tried to pressure his vice president to throw out President-elect Joe Biden’s electors).
Democrats are also discussing clarifying that Congress counts electors in a “joint session” (the Trump coup memo argued that the ECA violates the 12th Amendment’s directive that a joint session counts electors, allowing the vice president to ignore the law and invalidate Biden’s electors himself).
Story continues below advertisement
Other ideas include making it harder for Congress to cast out legitimate electors (Trump got many Republicans to try this), and making it harder for state-level bad actors to send rogue electors to Congress (Trump tried this and failed).
Paul Blumenthal reports that companion reforms are moving in the Senate. But will 10 Republican senators ever support anything like them?
A big test
In an interesting exchange, after Jonathan Chait argued that the GOP as a party has become a deep long-term threat to democratic stability, Ross Douthat responded that damning the whole party is counterproductive: Virtuous Republicans stopped Trump in 2020, and if a similar scheme is attempted in 2024, Republicans will be what stops it again.
Story continues below advertisement
If so, we have a way to test this premise right now. Republicans of such good intentions should be eager to support reforming the ECA.
That’s not only because it will make stolen-election schemes less likely to succeed. It’s also because, by rendering such schemes more implausible, it will make it less likely that Republicans themselves face pressure to execute them in the future.
Shouldn’t well-meaning Republicans on both the state and national level want this? Will 10 GOP senators agree?
One hopes this is wrong, but that seems unlikely. The pathologies unleashed inside the party will probably make it impossible.
Yes, Republicans could sink ECA reform even as some still do the right thing later if this scheme is attempted again. But if they do kill reform, it will be another strike on the ledger for deep pessimism about our democratic future.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.