What have the House Select Committee’s Hearings on the Trump led riots at the Capitol revealed?
An update on the Trump mob assault invasion of the Capitol; January 6 2021
- Introduction:
On the January 6th 2021 an attempt was made by the electorally beaten, then President Trump – to overturn the election results favouring Biden, by assembling a mob to storm the Capitol. This, and Trump’s stalling and repeated claims of ‘stolen elections’ has been subject to a slow drip of investigations aimed at him. These reached a summit at the recent series of hearings at the Congress has unveiled a sordid story – all too common in capitalist ‘democracy’. The hearings were co-chaired by Democrat Chairman Bennie Thompson, and Rep. Liz Cheney. Even before the public hearings – a federal judge had ruled that:
“Trump was likely involved in at least two potential crimes: conspiracy to defraud the United States and obstruction of Congress.”; at: Wertheimer and Eisen
These hearings were skillfully orchestrated for a mass TV audience, and succeeded in capturing the attention of many:
“Nearly 20 million people watched the first hearing and 13 million tuned in on June 28 to catch Cassidy Hutchinson’s… testimony. CNN reports that almost six out of ten people in the United States are following the hearings, and CBS finds that nearly 70 percent believe it’s important to find out the truth.” at: David Duhade July 10, 2022
Trump allies, high appointees, family and aides poured out streams of damning evidence. In particular Attorney General Barr. Thus far perhaps the 6th session was most riveting with top former White House aide, 26-year old Ms. Cassidy Hutchinson.
What have we learnt from the hearings?
- Assessments before the Hearings
Before examining that, we summarise briefly a prior assessment which proposed that:
“There are some very strange elements… it is extremely difficult to believe that anyone could have been ‘surprised’ by the January 6th ‘event’.” at Hari Kumar
We argued that a very well choreographed movement had ‘stood down’ law enforcement, encouraging Trump to over-reach. Elements of the Republican party wished to get rid of the leader they had called into existence.
But why should members of the Republican Party wish to participate in this? Because they are split between advocates of the ‘dirty’ extraction industry (oil, gas, coal) and advocates for industrialists. The latter initially supported Trump to ‘re-shore’ industry, but then pulled back their support:
“the Republican Party is riven… they could not get rid of Trump without some form of public rejection of him…
As the ‘event’ was unfolding, The National Association of Manufacturers weighed in with condemnation quickly, and called for Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment – which disempowers the President and effectively removes him from office.”
This divide in the ruling capitalist class of the USA is examined in more detail below (See sections 4-5).
Many progressives instinctively dismiss such views as ‘conspiracist’. But progressives often under-estimate the calculated deviousness and factionalism within the ruling class.
Events at the on-going hearings confirm important pillars of the previous report.
- Brief summary of findings from the hearings to date
The US Secret Services destroyed messages January 5-6 and tried to remove Pence from the Capitol.
As Trump was trying to force Pence to refuse to ‘certify’ the elections results, the Secret Services were trying to whisk him away from the White House. But the Secret service has deleted key data:
“The House Select Committee… has subpoenaed the U.S. Secret Service for more information about text messages from January 5 and 6, 2021, that were reportedly erased or deleted.” Democracy Now July 18 2022
“the erasure took place shortly after oversight officials requested the agency’s electronic communications…. The Secret Service has emerged as a key player in the explosive congressional hearings … Vice President Mike Pence was at the Capitol … When rioters entered the building, the Secret Service tried to whisk Pence away from the scene. “I’m not getting in the car,” Pence reportedly told them. . Had Pence entered the vice-presidential limo, he would have been taken to a secure location where he would have been unable to certify the presidential election results… “If Pence had listened to the Secret Service and fled the Capitol.. a congressional official .. told The Intercept. “It could’ve been a successful coup, not just an attempted one.” Ken Klippenstein , July 14, 2022, The Intercept
One can reasonably ask what did the Secret Services remove from their files?
Trump and his family fully knew he had lost the election
Trump was advised by aides he had lost. Rather more pithily, Attorney general Barr advised in response to his wish to publicise a ‘stolen election, as follows: “I told the president it was bullshit.”
[2 minutes 46 s; and Barr at 2 minutes 18 s; at CNN Five minute Summary video 9 June
Both Trump’s daughter (Ivanka Trump) and son-in-law (Jared Kushner), both illegitimately appointed to enormous powers by Trump – testified they knew that the election was lost by Trump. Ivanka cited Barr’s advice. [1]
Trump attempted to pressure voting officials and ‘find’ votes
Previously Georgia’s Secretary State Brad Raffensberger had been vocal about Trump’s pressure. At the Hearings he confirmed:
“Trump sought to procure nonexistent votes, with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger testifying about Trump’s pressure to get him to ‘find 11,780 votes.’” Wertheimer and Eisen
But in addition Republican high officials substantiated:
“Trump’s direct involvement in procuring an alternate slate of fraudulent electors through the testimony of live witnesses like Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers and videotaped ones from Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna Romney McDaniel.” Wertheimer and Eisen
Multiple evidences emerged that Trump actively planned the attempted coup with the right wing extremist groupings
When all that failed, Trump was in active planning mode with his supporters to storm the Capitol, amply confirmed by several strands of testimony including that of former aide Cassidy Hutchinson. She also confirmed that Trump has a mental age of approximately 3.75 years throwing tantrums where Trumps smashed plates of food against the wall and grabbed steering wheels of cars in motion:
“She said that Mr. Trump tried to grab the steering wheel of the presidential limousine and lunged for his Secret Service agent because he wanted to go to the Capitol, and added that at one point he hurled his plate of lunch at a wall in the White House.
“I grabbed a towel and started wiping the ketchup off of the wall to help the valet out,” Ms. Hutchinson testified.” [1]
More disturbing was Trump’s support of mob calls to hang Pence for his defiance. The NPR transcript reads:
“I overheard the President say… I don’t effing care that they (ie the mob) have weapons. … They’re not here to hurt me. Take that effing mags (i.e magnets to detect weapons that were screening the entry to an open-space meeting) away. Let my people in. They can march to the Capitol from here. Let the people in. Take the effing mags away.
… I remember Pat (i.e. White House counsel Pat Cipollone) saying… “Mark (President Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows) we need to do something more. They’re literally calling for the vice president to be f’ing hung. And Mark had responded something to the effect of, you heard him, Pat. He thinks Mike deserves it. ….
LIZ CHENEY: Let me pause here on this point. As rioters chanted hang Mike Pence, the president of the United States, Donald Trump, said that “Mike deserves it,” and that those rioters were not doing anything wrong. This is a sentiment that he has expressed at other times as well. In an interview with ABC News correspondent Jonathan Karl, President Trump was asked about the supporters chanting hang Mike Pence last year. Instead of condemning them, the former president defended them. [Begin videotape]…
JONATHAN KARL: Saying hang Mike Pence.
DONALD TRUMP: Because it’s — it’s common sense, Jon. It’s common sense that you’re supposed to protect — how can you — if you know a vote is fraudulent, right, how can you pass on a fraudulent vote to Congress? https://text.npr.org/1108396692
Because the NPR transcript does not capture the powerful effect of a composed Hutchinson, the short clips videos are recommended, at CNN Five minute Summary video 9 June ; or at 1minute 27s at Liz Cheney Summary; or at Maggie Haberman [1].
- How can Marxist-Leninists Interpret these events?
In the book entitled: “What is Behind Trump – Is There Method Behind His Madness? Finance Capital and Industrial Capital – An Evolutionary History”; 2018; we wrote:
“One thing is clear – the ruling class in the USA is divided today. We suggest that the raging and very open controversy between members of the political representatives of the capitalist class in the USA – must have a material basis – which Marxist-Leninists should locate. When Richard Milhous Nixon was elected in 1972, a similar furor took place.” [August, 2019 at: Trump Finance Capital]; p.4/170
Previously W.B. Bland had identified the Watergate Crisis as another uncorked manifestation of inter-capitalist rivalries in the USA. He wrote, for the ‘Marxist-Leninist Organisation of Britain’ in January 1974 that:
“The corruption in high places which has been revealed in the ‘Watergate Affair’ is an inevitable concomitant of the profit motive on which the capitalist system is based. Usually this corruption is kept decently hidden from the people, and this process of containment is normally assisted by the media of the ruling class. Where … this corruption is pointedly made public, this is invariably because there is a serious conflict of interest within the ruling class, a conflict in which one group publicizes the sins of its rival as part of the struggle to defeat them…
The power of the campaign of exposure against Nixon which followed the so called ‘Watergate Affair’ lies in the fact that it was undertaken by organs of US imperialism – by the ‘New York Times’, the ‘Washington Post’, the House of Representatives and the Senate. The explanation for this is not of course, that Nixon has suffered some mental aberration which has led him to espouse the cause of the working class! It lies in the fact that since 1963 the executive branch of the state has been controlled by a particular section of the US monopoly capitalists, a section most directly associated with the oil, armaments, and aerospace industries, a section which has used the power of the White House to the detriment of the majority of the US monopoly capitalists.” Bland Watergate
Bland had characterized this grouping as the ‘cowboys’, in distinction to those monopoly capitalists resting their claims on financial capital – the ‘yankees’.
In “What is Behind Trump – Is There Method Behind His Madness? Finance Capital and Industrial Capital – An Evolutionary History” – I asked:
“Similarly, perhaps we should search for the current division in the ruling class that has prompted uproars in the “New York Times” and CNN about Trump… We will argue that currently, Trump is indeed, largely a representative of the ‘cowboys’, propelled into power by such as the Koch Brothers. We will further argue, that opposing him are the leaders of the Democratic party, who, are largely fronts for financial capital – the ‘yankees’.
The qualification of ‘largely’, is needed because underlining all power struggles in capitalism, is a fundamental unity of all sectors of capitalists against the working class. On many issues, both yankees and cowboys agree. For instance, on tax ‘reform’ (for which please understand code for enriching further the capitalists).” Trump Finance Capital; p.4/170
We explicitly recognized this division was not always evident because of the recent economic history of the dominance of profits in the financial sectors:
“It may be objected, that there have been some actions of the Trump regime, that favour Wall Street and its financiers. However, a consistent theme since the 19th Century has been the increasing inter-connection of finance capital and industrial capital. The current upper hand of the ‘cowboys’ does not negate this.” Trump Finance Capital; p.4/170
We cited the well informed analysts, Pam Martens and Russ Martens:
“You are likely wondering why, if the fossil fuels industry is cracking the whip at the Trump White House, there is also so much deregulation of Wall Street happening. That’s because Koch Industries also has a sprawling trading division called Koch Supply & Trading with offices in Houston, New York City, Wichita, Mexico City, London, Geneva, Singapore, and Shanghai. According to its website, it trades crude oil, refined products and derivatives, metals, interest rates and currency futures, among other things. That aligns its interests directly with the deregulation crowd on Wall Street.”
September 11, 2018; Wall Street On Parade Blog
- Newer Analysis supporting the division, yet continued inter-penetration
By and large the previous analyses of Bland and ML Current Today, seem to be confirmed rather than challenged by more recent data. Thus there is an overlap between the two parties in support by the FIRE(finance, insurance, and real estate) sectors of the economy. However ‘dirty’ extractive economy gravitates to the Republicans, and Silicon Valley and ‘high tech’ to the Democrats:
“At the very top, both parties are beholden to the fire sector—finance, insurance and real estate. Below that, the two coalitions are distinct. The Republicans have solid support from ‘dirty’ manufacturing, the extractive industries, big retail, food services and large-scale family firms. The Democrats, in contrast, have strong support from the high-tech giants of Silicon Valley, the education, information, arts and entertainment sectors, and elite professionals: media and university intellectuals, lawyers, engineers and other proponents of the use of science to guide public policy.6 Among the ruling classes, the Democrats probably have much broader support than the Republicans. Thus Biden apparently got more campaign cash than Trump from almost every major industry, with the one exception being oil and gas interests.” [2]
The Koch Seminars (pro-Republican) and the Democratic Alliance seminars (Pro Democrats) shows the same patterns:
“For Koch donors with a readily identifiable industrial sector as the main source of their wealth, the most common sectors (beyond finance, insurance, and real estate) are mining and natural resource extraction (21 percent) and manufacturing (18 percent)…. In contrast, the most common DA wealth sources (beyond finance, insurance, and real estate) are found in professional services (20 percent, and especially concentrated in the legal services fields) and the information industry (23 percent).” [3]
It follows that:
“The huge high-tech and entertainment companies that support the Democratic Party are interested in the protection of ‘intellectual property rights’, while the extractive industries that back the Republicans are more interested in getting access to public lands and being allowed to despoil them as they wish.” [2]
- What should progressives understand?
Whether or not there are legal consequences for Trump, Rudy Giuliani, or any of the criminal crew surrounding Trump – is almost irrelevant. If there are, it helps the narrative that “democracy” has reasserted itself. What has taken place is the latest manifestation of a battle within the divided capitalist class of the USA, as revealed by Watergate. Bland Watergate
In our view, there are two main things that leftists and progressives should consider.
Firstly, some – including leaders of the DSA continue to have constitutional illusions. Even now – after the Supreme Court’s evident‘ politicisation’ on climate, electoral laws, and now rescinding Roe vs Wade – Duhalde, chair of the Democratic Socialists of America Fund, and former deputy director of DSA – suggests:
“One way to prevent this authoritarian slide is through engaging in public pressure to push Garland and other Justice Department officials to prosecute Trump and his allies….We cannot have a multi-racial working-class socialist society without first achieving a functioning democracy.”
While this is too naïve, we should not lurch to the other extreme and throw out the baby with the bath-water. It is true the Republicans and the Democrats become ever more exposed to many people, as being simply varieties of the same fruit-cake.
But yet there remain objective differences and it is necessary to remind ourselves that we need to not only recognize them, but we need to utilize them. For as V. I. Lenin wrote:
“The more powerful enemy can be vanquished only by exerting the utmost effort, and by the most thorough, careful, attentive, skillful and obligatory use of any, even the smallest, rift between the enemies, any conflict of interests among the bourgeoisie of the various countries and among the various groups or types of bourgeoisie within the various countries, and also by taking advantage of any, even the smallest, opportunity of winning a mass ally, even though this ally is temporary, vacillating, unstable, unreliable and conditional. Those who do not understand this reveal a failure to understand even the smallest grain of Marxism, of modern scientific socialism in general.”
V.I.Lenin “Left-Wing” Communism or at Moscow 1964,Vol 31; p.90:
Secondly, we are still woefully disunited. It remains necessary for a united Marxist-Leninist party to be formed. We reiterate the same words as in a prior article:
“Until there is a real, organized mass movement of working people in the United States, we can expect nothing more than continued choreography.”
A shorter version of this was at Berlin left 23 July 2022.
[1] Maggie Haberman, “Jared and Ivanka, Without the Power or the Masks”; New York Times June 9, 2022
[2] Dylan Riley; “Faultlines: Political Logics of the US Party System”; New Left Review 126 nov dec 2020 35-50
[3] Alexander Hertel-Fernandez, Theda Skocpol, Jason Sclar; “When Political Mega-Donors Join Forces: How the Koch Network and the Democracy Alliance Influence Organized U.S. Politics on the Right and Left”; Studies in American Political Development, 32 (October 2018), 127–165.