The Justice Department is doing its job. Will voters?
Columnist|
October 17, 2022 at 10:30 a.m. EDT
President Biden spoke for many rational Americans on Satuday when he described recent testimony released by the House Jan. 6 select committee as “devastating.” Indeed, many remain frustrated that the Justice Department has yet to move forward with any indictment of former president Donald Trump for his involvement in the coup attempt.
Biden noted that he has not spoken with Attorney General Merrick Garland, taking care not to influence the Justice Department’s investigation. But Garland does not seem to need a push. After what seemed to be a slow start, his department seems to be moving swiftly on multiple fronts against Trump.
Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), a member of the Jan. 6 committee, acknowledged in an interview with ABC News’s “This Week” on Sunday that “the Justice Department appears to be pursuing this pretty hard.” It has plainly indicated that its investigation has moved beyond the events that took place on Jan. 6, confiscating phones of key players such as former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark and Trump lawyer John Eastman and summoning high-level witnesses such as Marc Short and Greg Jacob before a grand jury.
Garland himself has stated that if there are sufficient facts to prove a case of conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding or defraud the United States against someone, his department would be compelled to bring charges against them regardless of who they are. Likewise, if there are sufficient facts to hold Trump responsible for violence on Jan. 6, a seditious conspiracy charge is hardly out of the question.
In other words, the Justice Department is not the player that should worry democracy defenders. More important is whether voters will do their part to keep election deniers out of office in November.
Asked about such candidates on the ballot, Kinzinger observed, “I don’t think this is just going to go away organically. This is going to take the American people really standing up and making the decision that truth matters.” He added that the challenge with these Republicans is that they “can’t even agree on basic facts or will lie to the American people.”
This is despite the efforts of the Jan. 6 committee, which has exceeded all expectations in debunking the “big lie” of a stolen election and detailing Trump’s deliberate attempt to retain power by whatever means necessary. Voters might still decide to hand the House to Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and his band of election deniers. And they might still elect election liars such as Republican Arizona governor candidate Kari Lake, who on CNN’s “State of the Union” once more refused to say whether she would accept the results if she loses. If she and others like her are put in charge of their state’s election machinery, they will deal a grievous blow to democracy.
There is no backstop for democracy, as we saw on Jan. 6, without responsible people in key positions. Had Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger not denied Trump’s demand for him to “find” enough votes to swing his state, or had Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers not refused to reconvene the legislature to revoke the electors whom voters selected, we might have fallen into a constitutional crisis.
Next time, if
McCarthy insists on entertaining spurious objections to electoral votes, or if
Lake and other MAGA governors refuse to certify the actual winner in their
states, the ensuing chaos could make Jan. 6 look like a picnic. This could deal
a fatal blow to our democracy.
Inflation will pass.
Budget deficits will rise and fall. And border problems will persist. But once
democracy is lost, it is irretrievable. The most important question
is no longer whether Garland will fail democracy, but whether the American
people will.