Investigation into the Capitol invasion: the noose tightens around Donald Trump

He was to give a press conference, a year to the day after the Capitol invasion. But Donald Trump gave up, two days before the event, blaming the parliamentary commission investigating the origins of this historic event: “In view of the dishonesty and the bias of the Commission of Democrats, of the two Republicans misfires and Fake News Media, I’m canceling the Jan. 6 Press Conference in Mar-a-Lago on Thursday, and instead I’ll be talking about these important topics during my meeting on Saturday, Jan.15 in Arizona: there will be crowd! ”he wrote, meeting his supporters in this southern state where Joe Biden won in the presidential election – the first time for a Democrat since 1996. Among the targets of his anger, the two elected Republicans who agreed to sit on this committee, Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, who had already voted in favor of his impeachment by the House of Representatives.

To have :A year ago the Capitol invasion

But if Donald Trump accuses the parliamentary committee, which is also investigating the failings of the police and the intelligence services, it is because it has recently focused on its attitude during the invasion of the Capitol. Joe Biden himself mentioned it during his speech on January 6, criticizing the inaction of his predecessor without ever naming him and lamenting “a former president, who had just gathered this crowd, sitting in the dining room of the Office. oval of the White House, watching it all on TV and doing nothing ”. The commission seeks to determine the role played by the billionaire, who had gathered his supporters on the occasion of this demonstration “Stop the Steal” (“Stop the theft”), during which he called on them to ” fight like devils otherwise you will no longer have a country ”. In his eyes, “the uprising took place on November 3, what happened on January 6 was the completely unarmed protest of the rigged election.” “Why does the unselective commission of highly partisan amateurs not investigate the CAUSE of the demonstration on January 6, which was the rigged election of 2020?”, He insists, without recalling that no evidence of fraud has been uncovered, despite the sixty appeals to justice of his campaign team.

A potential criminal investigation targeting Donald Trump?

Since its creation last summer, the commission has interviewed more than 300 witnesses including former Trump administration officials, summoned more than 50 people to appear and obtained more than 35,000 pages of documents, including numerous exchanges of messages. between the “chief of staff” of the White House Mark Meadows and some stars of Fox News, the powerful conservative news channel. “Mark, the president needs to tell the people on Capitol Hill to go home. It hurts us all. He is destroying his heritage, ”Laura Ingraham had warned. “It destroys everything you have done,” said Brian Kilmeade. Donald Trump Jr, the eldest son of the former US president, also went through him to ask for the intervention of his father, which occurred more than an hour after the first violence with an ambivalent message, deploring the violence while assuring the rioters of his support. For his part, Donald Trump has seized the Supreme Court, refusing to send his own documents to the investigation.

The stake is major: if the evidence is sufficient, explains the “New York Times”, the commission could ask the Department of Justice to open a criminal investigation against Donald Trump, already indicted for “incitement to the ‘insurrection’ and who had escaped impeachment (after the end of his mandate) thanks to the acquittal by the Senate. “We know that hours have passed without any action on the part of the President to defend the United States Congress from attack while we were in the process of counting the voters. Did Donald Trump, actively or passively, seek in a corrupt way to obstruct or hinder the official process of Congress? ”Asked Liz Cheney, who was present with her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney. , at the Congress on January 6 for the tribute one year after the event.

On the side of Donald Trump’s relatives, the noose is also tightening. Last month, elected officials called for criminal charges against Mark Meadows, who recanted after initially saying he would collaborate with the investigation, as they did for Steve Bannon, a former councilor for Donald Trump. Two pro-Trump Republican elected officials, Jim Jordan and Scott Perry, refused to testify, denouncing a partisan investigation despite the presence of their Republican colleagues from Wyoming and Illinois. “It brings together people who have very different political views, but who come together when it comes to the defense of the Constitution, so it gives me hope,” said Liz Cheney, excluded from ABC News. his leadership role within the Republican group for publicly opposing Donald Trump.

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