Just weeks before taking the oath of office, President Joe Biden watched from his home in Delaware as thousands of rioters stormed the US Capitol on January 6 in hopes of stopping him from doing so. .
A year after the siege left five people dead and hundreds injured, Biden blamed the attack on Congress and attempted an uprising at the feet of his predecessor, former President Donald Trump.
“For the first time in our history, a president didn’t just lose an election — he tried to prevent a peaceful transfer of power when a violent mob invaded the Capitol, ‘ Biden said, speaking from the Capitol’s Monument Building where once stood. “But they failed. They failed.”
“On this day of remembrance, let’s make sure that such an attack, never, never happens again.”
Biden, without mentioning his predecessor by name once during his 25-minute speech, condemned Trump’s role in fueling the failure with discredited claims of election fraud, as well as His silence during the worst of the riots, threatened his own life. Vice president.
“He couldn’t accept that he had lost.”
– President Joe Biden talks about his predecessor.
“We have to be absolutely clear about what’s true and what’s a lie, and here’s the truth: the former president of the United States created and spread a web of lies about the 2020 election,” Biden said. said, sounding angrier than he had been since the day of trying to revolt. “He does it because he values authority more than principles, because he sees his own interests as more important than the interests of his country, over the interests of America, and because his bruised ego is more important to him than our democracy or our Constitution.”
“He can’t accept he’s lost,” Biden said angrily, referring to Trump as a “failed”, “failed” and “failed” president who broke his most solemn oath. with the American people.
Vice President Kamala Harris, who spoke before Biden, recalled the memory of the Pearl Harbor attacks and the September 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington as the days – now joined in January 6th – as the date “instantly reminds everyone who has lived through them where they have been and what they are doing. “
Biden spent weeks working on the address, according to White House officials, noting both the solemnity of the celebration and the fragile state of American democracy, as Trump continued to lie about the election. president in 2020 from life in exile in Palm Beach, and because Republicans have largely united behind him and his statements.
But for most of his presidency, Biden has worked hard to avoid being Trump-centered — and to avoid being central to investigations into the origins of the riots and the aftermath. their fruit.
During the first weeks of the administration, after taking office right here Where rioters battled the US Capitol Police for hours, Biden has indicated that avoiding playing a role in Trump’s next impeachment over his actions on January 6, even denied considered whether the Senate he served for nearly four decades should convict his predecessor. Trump was eventually impeached by the House of Representatives after the attempted coup for “inciting rebellion” by calling on his supporters to march on the Capitol as Congress convened to certify the electoral college results. , but he was acquitted by the Senate 57-43.
As Congress debated the ultimately failed attempt to form a bicameral committee to investigate the origins and consequences of the attack, the Biden White House voiced support for an investigation, but left it unanswered. question about the composition of the potential committee for Congress itself. After a final committee was formed — now a House selection committee made up of seven Democrats and two Republicans — the White House has almost entirely raised questions about Trump’s actions. me.
However, Biden occasionally rushes into the fray in unprotected moments, telling reporters in October that the committee should prosecute witnesses who refuse to comply with congressional subpoenas to do so. evidence of the attack. Biden later said it was “inappropriate” to review any actions by the Justice Department, which he said “damaged” the previous administration, but told reporters last month that a efforts of the former White House Chief of Staff. Mark Meadows to avoid testifying appeared “despised.”
But the Biden administration has also quietly eased the committee’s investigation, refusing to shield Trump-era White House documents despite his claims of executive privilege. In an October letter, White House adviser Dana Remus told the National Archives David Ferriero that Biden would not block the committee from viewing White House documents, saying that after consulting the Department of Justice, “President Biden has determined that the assertion of executive privilege is not in the best interests of the United States, and is therefore not justified”.
The criminal investigation into the attack has largely been left to the Department of Justice, which has move with purposeful speed to investigate, charge, and prosecute the approximately 2,000 people who entered the Capitol Building during the attack. On Wednesday, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said the speed of those prosecutions — and what counts as a relatively minor charge for those alleged to have committed a terrorist plot. aimed at overthrowing the government — following “old-fashioned due process” in an investigation of unprecedented complexity.
“In complex cases, the initial crime is often less serious than the one charged later. This is on purpose, as investigators methodically collect and sift through additional evidence,” Garland said. “A necessary consequence of the prosecution-oriented approach of charging less serious crimes first is that courts impose shorter sentences before imposing longer ones.”
However, Garland swore that “the actions we have taken so far will not be our last”.
On a more practical level, Biden has gone to great lengths to prevent Trump from stealing the presidency from his seaside Elba. Biden has almost completely avoided using Trump’s name in public, referring only to him as “my predecessor” or “the old one,” or as he did on Thursday sixteen times, “the former president. “Last month, Biden even stated, ‘I don’t think about the former president. ”
But even though Biden really didn’t think much of the man who tried to subvert the election, Trump has continued to rally Republicans around the idea that Biden is a fake president.
Instead of becoming Nixonian disgrace and notoriety in the year since he left office, Trump has largely succeeded in Radicalize the Republican Party that has temporarily appeared to abandon him. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), who has called Trump responsible for the attack on Congress, will later visit him at Mar-a-Lago and has defended him ahead of the attack. investigate. The majority of Republicans today believe overwhelmingly — or, in the case of many elected Republicans, pretend to believe– in his bogus allegations of widespread voter fraud. Republicans nationwide have laid the groundwork for future efforts to circumvent the election results, through restrictive voting measures in many states and the removal of disloyal members from the electoral college. local.
Some Republicans who have publicly resisted the wave of Trump’s “Big Lies,” as Biden called it on Thursday, have been dropped by the party, with key challenges sponsored by candidates nominated Trump endorsed and, in the case of Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY), stripped her of her position on the party’s congressional leadership.
Trump’s continued grip on power over his party – and the growing likelihood that he will pursue the presidency again in 2024 – was not mentioned in Biden’s remarks on Thursday. But the “unprecedented attack” on American democracy and its aftermath, as Biden called it in the hours after last year’s attack, was the focus of the twin speeches.
“January 6 reflects the dual nature of democracy: its fragility and its strength,” Harris said. “The fragility of democracy is this: if we are not vigilant, if we do not defend it, then democracy simply will not stand. It will falter and fail.”
The future of this potential “unraveling” of American democracy lies in the hands of Congress, Harris said.
