The last act of the presidency of Donald Trump played in the House of Representatives on December 19. At the end of his work, the commission of inquiry constituted after the assault of Trumpist militiamen and 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 that which it holds for the instigator of the facts.
The charges selected are heavy: appeal to insurrection, conspiracy against the State, hinders an official procedure, in this case the certification of the results of the 2020 presidential election, and false declarations. This severity is a reflection of facts of an unprecedented gravity in the history of the United States: a real attempted coup.
These prosecutions put an end to a warrant of noise and fury, enamelled with two indictments by the House of Representatives, controlled by the Democrats but where the Republicans will become majority in the start of the school year. With the exception of a handful of elected conservatives who paid him for their political career, the latter did everything to prevent the work of this commission to have a cathartic effect for the greatest misfortune of American institutions.
It will now belong to the special prosecutor Jack Smith, appointed on November 18 by the Attorney General of the United States, Merrick Garland, to decide and take back, or not, all or part of these charges. He will face the delicate task of educating the file 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 much, a political maneuver.
blindness
Jack Smith will have thousands of documents accumulated by the commission of inquiry during his work. A rich material, despite the refusal to testify to close advisers of the one who then occupied the oval office, and against whom prosecution is also recommended.
Two lessons can already be taken from this provisional epilogue. The first concerns the Republican Party, decidedly unable to oppose the principles to the one who has continued to lead them by the substance since he became their mentor. If they end up turning away from him, it will be less moved by a democratic reflex than by the observation, supported by the results of the mid-term elections, that Donald Trump makes his camp lose by being unable to get out of denial as to Joe Bid’s victory in the presidential election. This blindness is all the more regrettable since the defeats suffered by the most buried candidates in the lie of a stolen election show how much it has become a red line for a good part of the voters in the United States.
The second lesson, nourished by the work of the commission of inquiry of the House of Representatives, is in fact a reminder. The most serious threats to American democracy today come from an extreme supremacist which Donald Trump has trivialized rhetorical springs. The weight of the militias that went to the forefront of the attack on January 6, attests. Unfortunately, this situation is not specific to the United States. The dismantling of a network in Germany also targeting the institutions of the country testifies to the same insurrectional temptation, which calls for increased vigilance.