Lhe last act of Donald Trump’s presidency took place in the House of Representatives on December 19. At the end of its work, the commission of inquiry formed after the assault by militiamen and Trumpist sympathizers against the Capitol on January 6, 2021, inspired by the incendiary and conspiratorial rhetoric of the former businessman, recommended to the Department of Justice to initiate criminal proceedings against the person it considers to be the instigator of the facts.
The charges are heavy: call for insurrection, conspiracy against the state, obstruction of an official procedure, in this case the certification of the results of the 2020 presidential election, and false declarations. This severity is the reflection of facts of unprecedented gravity in the history of the United States: a genuine coup attempt.
These prosecutions put an end to a term of sound and fury, interspersed with two indictments by the House of Representatives, controlled by the Democrats but where the Republicans will again become the majority at the start of the January school year. With the exception of a handful of elected Conservatives who have paid for it with their political careers, they have done everything to prevent the work of this commission from having a cathartic effect, to the greatest misfortune of American institutions.
It will now be up to special prosecutor Jack Smith, appointed on November 18 by the attorney general of the United States, Merrick Garland, to decide and take over, or not, all or part of these charges. He will be faced with the delicate task of investigating the case of a man who has already declared himself a candidate for the next presidential election and who is determined to denounce, once again, once too often, a political maneuver.
Blindly
Jack Smith will dispose of the thousands of documents accumulated by the commission of inquiry during its work. A rich material, despite the refusal to testify by close advisers of the one who then occupied the Oval office, and against whom prosecution is also recommended.
Two lessons can already be drawn from this provisional epilogue. The first concerns the Republican Party, decidedly unable to oppose in the name of principles the one who has never ceased to lead them from the bottom since he became their mentor. If they end up turning away from him, it will be less driven by a democratic reflex than by the observation, supported by the results of the midterm elections, that Donald Trump is causing his camp to lose by being unable to come out of denial about Joe Biden’s presidential victory. This blindness is all the more regrettable as the defeats suffered by the candidates most bogged down in the lie of a stolen election show how much it has become a red line for a good part of voters in the United States.
The second lesson, fed by the work of the House of Representatives commission of inquiry, is in fact a reminder. The most serious threats to American democracy today come from a supremacist extreme right whose rhetorical springs Donald Trump has trivialized. The weight of the militias which took the lead in the attack on January 6 is proof of this. Unfortunately, this situation is not unique to the United States. The dismantling of a network in Germany also targeting the country’s institutions testifies to the same insurrectional temptation, which calls for increased vigilance.