The Ohio Republican admits he spoke to Trump the day the Confederate flag flew in Congress. Aptly, the investigation of John Brown’s raid sets precedent for what must happen next
What did Jim Jordan know about the insurrection and when?
The House select committee on the 6 January insurrection at the Capitol, according to chairman Bennie Thompson, should “not be reluctant” to include on its witness list Republicans including the minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, Jim Jordan and others who have knowledge of or may have been implicated in the attack.
Those who would be requested to testify spoke with Donald Trump before, during and after the assault, attended strategy meetings and held rallies to promote the 6 January “Stop the Steal” event, and are accused by Democrats of conducting reconnaissance tours of the Capitol for groups of insurrectionists.
But committee members and legal scholars are grappling to find precedent.
“I don’t know what the precedent is, to be honest,” wonders Adam Schiff.
There is one.
After a bloody insurrection was quelled, a congressional committee was created to investigate the organization of the insurrection, sources of funding, and the connections of the insurrectionists to members of Congress who were indeed called to testify. And did.
On the morning of 16 October 1859, John Brown led a ragtag band of armed followers in an attack on the US arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. His plan was to attract fugitive slaves to his battle, take refuge in the Allegheny mountains and conduct raids on plantations throughout the south, raising a slave army to overthrow the government and replace the constitution with one he had written.
Brown became notorious as pro- and anti-slavery forces fought over how Kansas would be admitted to the Union. Brown committed a massacre and rampaged out of control. Radical abolitionists idealized him as an avenging angel of Puritan virtue. Some of the most prominent and wealthiest, known as the Secret Six, funded him without being completely clear about how the money was used.
Brown confided his plan on the eve of his raid to the great Black abolitionist Frederick Douglass and asked him to join. Douglass told him he would be entering “a perfect steel-trap and that once in he would never get out alive” and refused the offer. Brown was undeterred.
Within hours of the assault Brown and his band were cornered in the engine room of the armory, surrounded by local militia. Then the marines arrived under the command of Col Robert E Lee and Lt Jeb Stuart. Brown’s public trial, eloquent statements against slavery and hanging turned him into a martyr. John Wilkes Booth, wearing the uniform of the Richmond Grays and standing in the front ranks of troops before the scaffold on which Brown was hanged on 2 December, admired Brown’s zealotry and composure.
Nearly two weeks later, on 14 December, the Senate created the Select Committee to Inquire into the Late Invasion and Seizure of the Public Property at Harpers Ferry. Senator James M Mason of Virginia, the sponsor of the Fugitive Slave Act, was chairman. He appointed as chief prosecutor Jefferson Davis of Mississippi.
Davis was particularly intent on questioning Senator William H Seward of New York, the likely Republican candidate for president.
“I will show before I am done,” Davis said, “that Seward, by his own declaration, knew of the Harpers Ferry affair. If I succeed in showing that, then he, like John Brown deserves, I think, the gallows, for his participation in it.”
In early May 1858, Hugh Forbes, a down-at-heel soldier of fortune, a Scotsman who fought with Garibaldi in the failed Italian revolution of 1848, a fencing coach and a translator for the New York Tribune, knocked on Seward’s door with a peculiar tale of woe. He had been hired by Brown to be the “general in the revolution against slavery”, had written a manual for guerrilla warfare, but had not been paid. Seward sent him away and forgot about him.
Forbes wandered to the Senate, where he told his story to Henry Wilson, a Republican from Massachusetts. Wilson, who was later Ulysses S Grant’s vice-president, was alarmed enough to write to Dr Samuel Gridley Howe, a distinguished Boston physician and reformer, founder of the first institution for the blind, and Massachusetts chairman of the Kansas committee. Wilson relayed that he had heard a “rumor” about John Brown and “that very foolish movement” and that Howe and other donors to the Kansas cause should “get the arms out of his control”.
But Howe, a member of the Secret Six, continued to send Brown money.
The investigating committee called Seward and Wilson. On 2 May 1860, Seward testified that Forbes came to him, was “very incoherent” and told him Brown was “very reckless”. Seward said he offered Forbes no advice or money, and that Forbes “went away”.
Davis pointedly asked Seward if he had any knowledge of Brown’s plan to attack Harpers Ferry.
Seward replied: “I had no more idea of an invasion by John Brown at that place, than I had of one by you or myself.”
Wilson also testified, producing his correspondence with Howe, his recollection of strangely encountering Brown at a Republican meeting in Boston, and denying any knowledge of Brown’s plot. Other witnesses were subpoenaed and warrants were issued for the arrest of those who failed to appear. Howe testified that he knew nothing in advance of the raid.
The Senate committee concluded its report citing the fourth section of article four of the constitution: “The United States shall guaranty to every State in this Union a republican form of government, and shall protect each of them against invasion, and, on the application of the legislature or of the executive, (when the legislature cannot be convened,) against domestic violence.”
Eight months after submitting the report, Davis assumed command of the greatest insurrection against the United States in its history, sworn in as president of the Confederacy.
His legacy as a senator before the civil war, however, established the precedent of a congressional committee calling members of Congress to testify about their knowledge of or participation in an insurrection: a precedent that can be used to investigate one in which for the first time the Confederate flag was carried through the Capitol.
Sidney Blumenthal, former senior adviser to President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, has published three books of a projected five-volume political life of Abraham Lincoln: A Self-Made Man, Wrestling With His Angel and All the Powers of Earth
Cashflow suggests while Trump retains an iron grip on party, there is still significant money behind efforts to wrest it free
Taking a stand against Donald Trump is guaranteed to bring Republicans online abuse, primary election challengers and barbs from the former US president himself. But it is also proving lucrative as donors scramble to breathe life into the anti-Trump resistance.
Liz Cheney, a Republican congresswoman from Wyoming and leading Trump critic, enjoyed her second consecutive record fundraising quarter with $1.88m from April to June, according to financial reports filed with the Federal Election Commission. She had raised $1.54m in the first three months of the year.
Adam Kinzinger, an Illinois congressman who defied party leaders by joining Cheney on the House of Representatives select committee investigating the 6 January insurrection, raised almost $2m in the second quarter, while his political action committee (Pac) took in $1.5m-plus.
And Americans Keeping Country First, which describes itself as the “only Super Pac dedicated solely to defending the members of Congress who took votes of conscience to impeach or convict President Trump” after the US Capitol riot, reported $525,000 in income through the end of June.
The hefty fundraising numbers suggest that, while Trump retains an iron grip on the Republican party, there is still significant money behind efforts to wrest it free from the man who was twice impeached and lost the House, Senate and White House.
“That is a bright sign for the Republican dissidents to be able to raise that kind of money,” said Charlie Sykes, a journalist and author of How the Right Lost Its Mind. “It’s unfortunate that it doesn’t change the dynamic that the Republican base is what it is.
“But it’s a reminder that there is a constituency for Republicans who are willing to break with Trump. It’s a signal that other Republicans can see that if in fact they do the right thing, they are not going to be completely abandoned, that there is potentially some support there.”
Breaking from Trump carries a political price. Cheney – daughter of former vice-president Dick Cheney – has already been censured by the Wyoming Republican party and ousted as the House Republican conference chair.
She, Kinzinger and other Republicans who voted to impeach Trump are set to face primary challenges from candidates endorsed by the former president ahead of next year’s midterm elections.
But the healthy cashflow suggests that the mavericks will not go down without a fight. Cheney out-raised her most prominent opponent, Wyoming state senator Anthony Bouchard, who took in a more modest $550,000 up to the end of June. Kinzinger challenger Catalina Lauf raised a little more than $350,000.
Americans Keeping Country First’s haul “puts it on or above the fundraising pace of independent political groups going after the few remaining Republican Trump critics in Congress”, Axios reported.
The figures come after a rough week for Trump. Susan Wright, whom he endorsed,, lost to fellow Republican Jake Ellzey in a primary in Texas – albeit one where Democrats were able to cast protest votes – and Senate Republicans defied his urgings to reject a bipartisan infrastructure deal.
Sykes added: “There are some green shoots. Those elements are all indications of possible vulnerability. Losing that primary where he had gone all in is significant but it’s a long way to go. It’s going to be a drip, drip, drip. There will be a lot of opportunities for other Republicans to find off-ramps if they’re looking for it.”
Declaring an end to Trump’s dominance of the party, however, usually proves wishful thinking. He raised more than $100m in the first half of 2021, far more than any other Republican and a remarkable sum for a former president. Many senior party figures still promote his false claim of a stolen election – at least in public.
Tim Miller, writer-at-large for the Bulwark website and former political director of Republican Voters Against Trump, said: “There are plenty of Republican donors that didn’t support the insurrection but are just going along to get along with Donald Trump. These are not profiles in courage but I could see them wanting to assuage their guilt by rewarding Cheney and Kinzinger.
“There are people that maybe don’t want to speak out and earn the ire of Donald Trump but want to be supportive; I know people like that. I’m not surprised that with the combination, from your quiet anti-Trump Republicans to your ‘Never Trumpers’, to some good-natured Democrats, you can pull together money. The question is whether that translates into popular support.”
Electoral strategy may also play a part. Some Republicans, and their financial backers, apparently regard Trump as a toxic figure in many suburban districts crucial to midterm success. Some of his anointed candidates, such as Herschel Walker for senator in Georgia, might soar in a primary but flame out in a general election. Money is therefore flowing to some more moderate rivals.
Wendy Schiller, a political science professor at Brown University said: “Whatever the polls say, whatever the voting base is, who is actually fueling the Republicans in terms of campaign contributions? You’re seeing a distinct split. You’re seeing some portion of the party – and that encompasses corporations and the Chamber of Commerce, which really likes stability – keeping the anti-Trump faction in pretty good shape at least with Kinzinger and Cheney.
“If you’re the Republicans and you desperately need to keep the suburbs you won back in 2020, you have to do something about the Trump surge because suburban voters are not going back to Trump. So if you have a GOP person in 2020 who took back a competitive suburban seat in that election, that person is going to have a hard time keeping the seat if they are too closely aligned with Trump.
“That’s where the Cheney-Kinzinger wing of the party has got to be able to raise enough money to keep those suburban GOPers in contention in a primary against a Trump supported opponent… finding a way to keep those people in the game in the primary from January to August.”
What happened on Jan. 6 was horrifying: an attempted coup, inflamed by social media, incited by the defeated president and televised in real time. What happened before Jan. 6, we are coming to learn, was equally horrifying: a slow-motion attempted coup, plotted in secret at the pinnacle of government and foiled by the resistance of a few officials who would not accede to Donald Trump’s deluded view of the election outcome.
That is the unnerving picture that is only beginning to fully emerge of what was happening behind the scenes as Trump, enraged by his loss, schemed to overturn clear election results with the connivance of not only top White House aides but also senior officials at the Justice Department who were maneuvering around their chain of command to bolster Trump’s efforts.
Which raises the most disturbing question: What if? What if the senior Trump-installed officials at the Justice Department, notably acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen, had been more willing to put loyalty to Trump over the rule of law? What happens, God forbid, next time, when the outcome may be further muddied thanks to changed state laws shifting power from election officials to partisan legislators?
I try not to be alarmist, but it is difficult to read the latest accounts and not be alarmed. The drip-drip-drip evolution of this story has served to mask how serious the threat was and how close it came to fruition.
We have known for months that Trump — heedless of constraints on hijacking Justice Department operations to his own political ends — had pressed Justice officials to intervene on his behalf. For example, he urged Rosen to appoint special counsels to investigate unfounded claims of voter fraud.
We knew that when Rosen balked, Trump entertained a plan to oust Rosen and replace him with Jeffrey Clark, the acting head of the civil division, who was more willing to push Trump’s fanciful assertions of fraud. We knew that Trump was deterred only after threats of mass resignations from other officials.
We knew that Clark had drafted a letter to Georgia state legislators asserting that the department was investigating claims of fraud in the state.
The cockamamie letter itself recently emerged. Dated Dec. 28, 2020, it stated that the department had “identified significant concerns that may have impacted the outcome of the election in multiple States, including the State of Georgia.” This despite the conclusion by Attorney General William P. Barr, before he resigned that month, that the department’s investigation had not uncovered “fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election.”
The Clark letter not only urged Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) to call the legislature into special session to consider “this important and urgent matter” but also advised the legislature of its “implied authority under the Constitution of the United States to call itself into special session for the limited purpose of considering issues pertaining to the appointment of Presidential Electors.” It was to be signed by Rosen, acting deputy attorney general Richard Donoghue and Clark himself.
Clark had insisted that his dealings with the White House were “consistent with law” and that he had merely participated in “a candid discussion of options and pros and cons with the president.”
This is not how things are supposed to work. At a normal Justice Department, the head of the civil division, rungs down the organization chart, does not end-run the attorney general to have “candid discussions” with the president. At a normal Justice Department, there are guardrails in place to prevent this sort of improper interference by the president.
Now we are getting accounts of what happened in those frenzied final days from Rosen himself. Over the weekend, he hastened to testify to the Justice Department inspector general and the Senate Judiciary Committee before Trump could seek to interpose assertions of executive privilege. Rosen’s former deputy, Donoghue, also appeared before the Senate panel. The testimony was behind closed doors, but as we learn more of what was said, I suspect there will be even more reason to be concerned about what might have been.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) told CNN on Sunday that he was “struck by how close the country came to total catastrophe.”
“What was going on in the Department of Justice was frightening,” Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) said on CNN’s State of the Union. “I think it’s a good thing for America that we had a person like Rosen in that position, who … withstood the pressure.”
Will that always be the case? Will the country be able to dodge future bullets, from Trump or his successors? I would like to think so. But if there is anything the past five years have shown, it is the disappointing fecklessness of too many of those in power in the face of the Trumpist onslaught.
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