(Review) THE JANUARY 6TH REPORT

TITLE: The January 6th Report: Final Report of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol

PUBLISHER: Celadon Books in Collaboration with The New Yorker

DATE: December X, 2022

BY: United States House of Representatives Select Committee Staff

PAGES: 724 - Paperback version

PREFACE: David Remnick, Pulitzer Prize author

FORWARDS: Nancy Pelosi, Speaker; Bennie Thompson, Chairperson; Liz Cheney, Vice Chairperson

EPILOGUE: Jamie Raskin, Congressperson

To start off this review let me outline how the organization of the book is presented:

Table of Contents:

I. Preliminaries

II. Executive Summary

III. Narrative:

     1. The Big Lie

     2. "I Just Want to Find 11,780 votes"

     3. Fake Electors and the President of the Senate Strategy

     4. "Just Call It Corrupt and Leave the Rest to Me"

     5. A Coup in Search of a legal theory

     6. "Be There, Will Be Wild"

     7. 187 Minutes of Dereliction

     8. Analysis of the Attack

 

A WARNING: Stick with the document that is directly issued by the United States Government Printing Services. There are already extremely redacted, edited, filtered versions issued by FOX NEWS, BREITBART, THE BULWARK, NEWSMAX, OAN, and other conservative medias. 

The importance of the committee's report has far less to do with the spectacle of Trump's unravelling due to his distinctive characteristics: his racism, misogyny, dishonesty, narcissism, incompetence, cruelty, instability, and corruption. Its importance resides in the establishment of a historical record, the depth of its evidence, the story it tells of a deliberate, coordinated assault on American democracy that could easily have ended with the kidnapping, or assassination of senior elected officials, the emboldenment of extremist groups and militias, and, above all, a stolen election, a coup.

The committee was not alone in its investigation. Many journalists contributed to the steady accretion of facts, directly from Trump's own videos, speeches, emails, texts, and private conversations. With subpoena power, the committee was able to uncover countless new illuminating details, especially from Trump's own inner circle. (This document is filled with information from sworn testimony of those close to Trump, that only agreed to testify behind closed doors away from the public hearings.)

This report is the factually based story of how Trump, humiliated by his loss to Joe Biden, conspired to obstruct Congress, defraud the country he was pledged to serve, and incite an insurrection to keep himself in power. And no, this was not just a few thousand spectators milling about that finally became a mob riot. Facts are presented that it was indeed a coordinated effort from the beginning to stop the Electoral College vote, to do bodily harm to Vice president Mike Pence and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi specifically.

The committee's published report does not have a single author. Rather, it is a collaborative effort written mainly by a team of investigators and staffers, with input from members of the committee. And, while it lacks a mediating, consistent voice, it is a startlingly rich story, thick with factual details of malevolent intent, political conspiracy, sickening violence, and human folly. What the Department of Justice does with this evidence remains to be seen. There is no question that historians will feast on these pages many decades to come.

Though Trump and his insurrectionists failed to halt the certification of the ballot, they did get substantial support: a hundred and forty-seven Republicans in Congress voted to overturn the election. This alone is without precedence in American history. Two years later most all of these supporters of the insurrection are still in Congress. This report does an excellent job defining what an insurrection actually is. Another section tells the story why only two Republicans ended up on the committee. The Minority Leader at the time, Kevin McCarthy, wanted to seat four of his own who openly supported the insurrection on that committee. 

To summarize David Remnick here, January 6th was a phenomenon rooted both in the degraded era of Trump and in the radicalization of a major political party during the past generation. The very power of these developments explains why many people may approach this Congressional Report with a sense of fatigue, even denial. Part of Trump's dark achievement has been to bludgeon the political attention of the country into submission.

A citizenry that can no longer bring itself to pay attention to such an investigation or to absorb its astonishing findings risks moving even farther toward a disturbing new normal: a post-truth, post-Democractic America. 

The committee's work was far from apolitical, and yet to dismiss the report as merely a *Soviet-style Show Trial* that rightwing pundits have done, would be a perilous act of resignation and defeatism.

The violation of January 6th was ultimately so brazen an act that many of Trump's own loyalists could not, in the end, bring themselves to defend him. Even some of the radical rightwing have come to recognize the insurrection's implications for the future. 

[ I deliberately cut 1,089 words from this review for the sake of brevity. There is much more to add but I leave it up to the would-be reader to buy the book and see for themselves. Afterall, I don't want to spoil the read.]