It was not a trial; they were neither judge nor jury. No one was indicted, convicted or sentenced. But it is time to seriously assess the lessons of the House Jan. 6 Committee hearings into the attack on the U.S. Capitol.
It is imperative to do so and negligent not to. The Department of Justice must now move to the fore and begin criminal proceedings against former President Donald Trump and his associates in their effort to overturn the will of the people and thwart the principles of democracy upon which this country is founded. Anything less would be a dereliction of duty.
Many people who believe Trump is culpable would still like “the whole thing to go away.” Yes,he acted terribly, but just write some hand-wringing editorials about never doing it again. Yet, it doesn’t go away. It becomes Hitler’s Germany, Franco’s Spain, Mussolini’s Italy, and more recently Orban’s Hungary, Bolsonaro’s Brazil, Putin’s Russia (all leaders greatly admired by Trump).
Many of us are terrified what a prosecution of a former president would do to a country as polarized as ours. Would we be courting societal violence? Promoting civil war? New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow recently turned that question on its head: What if we do not prosecute Trump for insurrection? What happens next for the country if he is not held accountable for that crime? As Blow warns, “Trump will have learned that while presidents aren’t too big to fail, they are too big to jail.”
Let’s not let “Citizen Trump” off that hook, one he has similarly evaded all his life. As Attorney General Merrick Garland recently proclaimed, “No person is above the law in this country.” Let’s hope he means it.
Daniel Sullivan
Bennington