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At the outset of this summer’s hearings, the select committee faced questions critical to its credibility and its prospects of being one of the few investigatory processes to ever hold Trump to account.
- Can it prove that the events after the 2020 election and the subsequent riot at the US Capitol were consciously orchestrated by Trump?
- And could it then use that evidence to show criminal intent that might prompt the Justice Department to prosecute the ex-President?
- With Trump itching to launch a new campaign that would test US institutions as never before, could the committee further shift public opinion against a lawless and autocratic ex-President who remains a threat to democracy?
The committee has comprehensively answered at least the first three of those questions and made progress on the other two.
It has also embroidered a broader narrative of an out-of-control President who put his own fantastical belief he won an election above more than two centuries of democratic tradition and the national interest. And, most chillingly, it is advancing a case — in the words of a key witness, retired conservative Judge J. Michael Luttig — that Trump remains “a clear and present danger” to US democracy.
As committee Vice Chair Liz Cheney, a Wyoming Republican, put it after Thursday’s extraordinary hearing, “Every American must consider this: Can a President who made the choices Donald Trump made during the violence of January 6 ever be trusted with any position of authority in our great nation again?”
That…
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Source : cnn
