How We Know Trump Did It
There is no more plausible deniability for the former president
Trump’s pleas of ignorance or incompetence are not holding up in the face of new facts. The lack of any credible explanation other than a planned, violent attack tells us that he almost certainly tried to violently overturn the election.
January 6th was quite a mess. 114 police officers were injured, one killed that day, and four more died afterward due to suicide. Other police officers were blinded or seriously injured. Eyes were gouged; fire extinguishers and pipes were used to strike police in the head.
Once in the building, some very bad characters were looking for our elected leaders including Vice President Mike Pence, and many chanted that they intended to kidnap or kill Pence in particular.
Yet many people believe that January 6th was merely a political demonstration gone awry, and not really an attack or attempted insurrection, or that Trump innocently exercised his free speech rights without intending that his more violent followers attack the Capitol.
We don’t have the proverbial smoking gun showing that Trump explicitly instructed his followers to attack, and we probably never will. There are no recorded phone calls, and it seems Trump used intermediaries (in classic mafioso fashion) to communicate with the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers.
But this does not mean there’s much to question about what happened. We can look for the places where there is no reasonable explanation other than armed, planned insurrection. What has been hidden can lead us to what likely happened.
Trump summoned people to DC on January 6th for a reason
First of all, Trump is extremely transactional (he wants benefit for himself at all times) but he’s not an idiot, so when he asked everyone to come to DC on January 6th, he had a reason and a plan that would benefit him. Trump does not do things, ever, that benefit others or are neutral, so we should ask if there is some other plausible motivation, other than overthrowing the election.
In addition to calling people to DC (“Be there. Will be wild!” he tweeted) Trump declined to call off the rioters or send in the National Guard, so an innocent, plausible explanation will need to cover that too.
Let’s consider alternatives and why we can reject them:
- Burnishing the Trump brand. Killing police and rioting, as we see through the hearings and media coverage of Jan 6, is actually not a good look, so the riots do not help Trump’s brand.
- Getting a point across. For normal people, a protest is often to raise awareness or make a point that is otherwise ignored. But Trump had the most effective communications platforms as both the sitting U.S. president and a master of social media. He also has Fox News and other fringe media that function as his personal propaganda network. He had no need to break through the noise to make a point.
- Revenge. Maybe Trump hoped his political enemies would be attacked or harmed and that was reason enough, even if it would not prevent Biden from being certified as the new president. In that view, Trump’s motive is pure violence rather than political insurrection. Possible, and still a crime.
- Other? I look forward to your (rational) comments on what else Trump could have been up to.
Trump planned the attack
We know Trump was planning something, but it was previously unclear exactly what until more information was surfaced by the Jan 6 congressional committee. Here are various reasons we know there was an explicit plan to have the rally morph into an attack on the Capitol.
- Trump had drafted, but never sent, a tweet saying the group would march to the Capitol after the rally.
- Trump demanded to be taken to the Capitol to lead the protester/militia mix. “I’m the fucking president. Take me up to the Capitol now,” he yelled, and then he physically lunged for the front seat, steering wheel, or driver of his car when he was told it was forbidden due to security concerns.
- Protesters were quoted as saying they heard they were going to the Capitol after the rally at the Ellipse. This is particularly damning, because it tells us there were explicit plans that had been communicated to leaders of the march, which also filtered down to some protesters.
- Trump spoke to Steve Bannon twice on Jan. 5, and Bannon (who doesn’t know when to shut up) leaked some of the plan on his radio show:
“All hell is going to break loose tomorrow…I’ll tell you this: It’s not going to happen like you think it’s going to happen… It’s going to be quite extraordinarily different. All I can say is, strap in.” — Steve Bannon
Trump was indirectly in contact with criminal elements linked to militias
Trump had Mark Meadows contact Michael Flynn and Roger Stone, both convicted felons who were only available because Trump had pardoned them after their convictions. And both of whom were closely related to the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers who were the armed, organized militias spearheading the attack.
- The Proud Boys skipped the rally at the Ellipse and went straight to the Capitol at 10:30 am, which is difficult to explain if there was not a plan to attack the Capitol.
- Roger Stone, Michael Flynn, and at least one other Trump functionary were closely tied to the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers. Stone had even taken the Fraternity Creed Oath that the Proud Boys use for initiation.
- These militias were planning extensively via chat apps, including mapping police locations and positioning a weapons cache nearby in a hotel room. If Stone and Flynn knew, you can bet Trump knew, or explicitly made sure he did not know the details.
This raises the question of why Trump was reaching out to these unsavory characters the day before the attacks. Some will say it is plausible that they were merely organizing the protests. Anything is possible but contacting the Trump associates who are most closely linked to the militias is certainly suspicious.
Trump allowed the attack to continue
We now know that Trump had been briefed that people at the riot were armed, and were calling for Vice President Pence to be hanged. Yet he declined to intervene. Again: why might Trump allow the attack to continue, other than a premeditated plan to overthrow the election via violence?
I assume Trump had some set of plans for when and if Pence and perhaps Pelosi were unavailable (hospitalized, dead, or in some Oath Keeper’s trunk?). Perhaps a friendly politician would have rejected the results of the electoral college, or he could have declared an emergency. I hope we find the answer someday.
It is also possible that Trump merely wanted violence inflicted on his enemies for its own sake. This would be purely malicious rather than political, but as I mentioned above, still criminal.
U.S. security forces were absent and inactive
Another puzzling gap in the factual record is the lack of a likely explanation for why the authorities were unprepared for rioting. How often does a confabulation of angry militias descend on the nation’s capital? You’d think someone would want to be prepared for that.
The Capitol Police, National Guard, and others are, in fact, experts at dealing with large demonstrations, and normally have procedures in place to secure U.S. buildings even against large who are expected to be peaceful. Yet those procedures were not put in place for Jan. 6.
Then, as the riots unfolded and Mike Pence called senior administration officials demanding the National Guard to be sent in, the guard was not sent in for multiple hours. Let that sink in. Cops are being killed and a mob including multiple militias in combat gear is breaching the Capitol, and they did nothing.
What reasonable explanation can there be? This is a “You had one job” moment for our DC-based security forces.
So there is an alternative explanation, however unlikely: incompetence and bizarre coincidence. But I’m betting on planned insurrection.
The presence of an absence
We don’t have a voice recording of Trump telling anyone to instruct his half-assed militias to go kill the vice president. And we almost certainly never will. So we need to look at what is missing, and strange enough to be compelling in its absence.
There was no other plausible reason for Trump to summon the Jan. 6 mob other than gaining another term for himself or killing his political opponents out of pure homicidal spite. There was no reason for him to allow the attack to continue for hours while militias were breaching the Capitol and calling for Pence’s death, other than to let a planned process unfold.
