Can US elections be made safe from Capitol-type mob violence?

The first anniversary of the mob attack on the US Capitol by followers of Donald Trump on January 6, 2021, in an attempt to overturn the result of the 2020 presidential election, coincided with a new and dramatic phase of a congressional committee’s investigation of what happened and what measures might prevent such violence from happening again.

In the days leading up to the anniversary, the US House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the United States Capitol, composed of seven Democrats and two Republicans (most Republicans opposed any inquiry), began to reveal the extraordinary amount of material it had gathered thus far. Unsurprisingly, Trump and his allies have adopted the strategy of attempting to drag out the committee’s proceedings, in the presumption that a Republican victory in the midterm elections this November will allow them to shut down the committee before it has completed its work.

But in a recent interview, the committee’s chair, Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, said that it will cut off its inquiry whenever that’s necessary in order to get its report written and distributed to the public. Obviously, they want that to be before the midterm elections.

Congressman Jamie Raskin of Maryland, who may have the most intellectual heft of anyone on the committee, recently told me: “The committee’s central goals must be informational, educational and legislative. We need to tell a comprehensive and fine-grained story about the attack on America that will lead to our recommendations for fortifying American democracy.”

This suggests that the committee seeks to follow the model of the 9/11 Commission, which examined in minute detail the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and wrote a compelling narrative. Actually, the Capitol riot and the September 11 attacks, known by their dates, have other similarities.

Both shocked the nation because they broke long-assumed boundaries. Neither should have been as surprising as they were: in both cases there was ample intelligence to warn of what was afoot. But in both, critical figures ignored that information.

As for how the January 6 committee views its assignment, Raskin told me: “January 6 featured three rings of activity: an outer ring of a ‘wild’ protest that turned into a riot; a middle ring of a violent insurrection led by Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, Militiamen, and the QAnon networks; and an inner ring of the coup where Trump, Bannon, Stone, Flynn, and various Congressional allies worked to reverse Biden’s Electoral College majority and force the contest into a House contingent election to be decided by a state-by-state tally. We are working to figure out all the strategic coordination and interaction among these three levels of activity.”

A question lurking around the inquiry has been whether prosecutions should be sought, not just for the demonstrators, of whom hundreds have been charged for their violent behavior in answering then-President Trump’s call to “fight like hell” to prevent Congress from validating Biden’s election. But should the followers be punished while the instigator is left free? Another issue coming to the fore is whether it’s more important to obtain prosecutions of key figures or to gain more information by granting pardons.

Attorney-General Merrick Garland has been widely criticised for not being more aggressive in prosecuting the high-level figures who worked to overturn the 2020 election. In fact, it’s understood that Biden’s White House has let the Justice Department know that the president would prefer that a prosecution of Trump arise from a civil probe by the Attorney General of New York into charges that Trump, Donald Jr., and Ivanka have engaged in tax dodging and bank fraud, rather than from action by the Justice Department. (A separate criminal investigation into how the Trump business was managed is also pending in New York.)

It’s understandable that Biden may be reluctant to prosecute his 2020 election opponent and potential opponent in 2024. Even if neither man runs in 2024, prosecution of a former president by his successor would be a huge distraction from Biden’s efforts to govern, would divide the country even further, and perhaps lead to even worse violence than a year ago.

Elizabeth Drew is a Washington-based journalist and the author, most recently, of Washington Journal: Reporting Watergate and Richard Nixon’s Downfall.