It is an obsession born of an evening of disappointment, the anger of a man who never subsided having possibly led to serious attacks on state security. The US Congressional Commission of Inquiry in charge of shedding light on the January 6, 2021 assault on the Capitol held its second public hearing on Monday, June 13. And it was rich in lessons. From the election night of November 3 to the insurrection of January 6, elected officials have tried to bring out, thanks to the hearing of close advisers to Donald Trump, the exact chronology of events.
On the evening of the results of the presidential election, several advisers to Donald Trump tried, according to them, to convince him not to announce his victory prematurely. In vain. His campaign leader, Bill Stepien, said he told him to wait for the end of the count before speaking, to which he was retorted: “You are wrong”. Jared Kushner, the president’s special adviser, reportedly agreed, telling the man who is also his father-in-law, “That’s not the approach I would take if I were you.” But faced with a man only convinced by people who shared his ideas, it was Rudy Giuliani, his personal lawyer, who had the last word. At 2:30 a.m., Donald Trump confided to American television: “Honestly, we won the election”. So when he learns that the strategic state of Florida is lost, he turns to Giuliani, who swears to his president friend that the ballot is rigged and that he must now follow “his instinct”.
To deny the evidence of defeat, it was necessary to summon the imagination, and fanciful schemes of supposed special effects are then established. The democrats, Cuba, Venezuela, all the enemies of the president are summoned, and specifically accused during a press conference given on November 19. Bill Stepien rubs shoulders with a man fleeing reality. “How long is he going to continue with these stolen election stories?” he asks Jared Kushner on November 23. In the days following the election, 62 complaints were filed for fraud. The justice of the United States rejects them all. Far from resolving the evidence, Donald Trump is looking for new remedies likely to justify his impossible defeat.
According to the investigators, the deposed president launched a collection with his supporters supposed to finance an Official Electoral Defense Fund, responsible for investigating the conduct of the vote. But several senior officials note that this entity never saw the light of day. Where did the 250 million dollars raised for this purpose go? 100 million is said to have been raised to fund complaints and fraud investigations, the rest is surely invested in the Trump empire. “The big lie was also a big scam,” said Zoe Lofgren, a Democratic congresswoman known to have worked on the congressional impeachments of Presidents Nixon, Clinton and Trump, during the hearing. Faced with these overwhelming testimonies, the former president hastened to react. This Monday evening, in a 12-page press release, he denounced “a travesty of justice” and “a shameless attempt to divert public attention from the truth”. Obsession when you hold us…
