Today's hearings: What did Trump know and when did he know it?

Trump knew the truth. He just viewed it as another obstacle.

Almost 50 years ago, Republican Senator Howard Baker, the ranking Republican on the Senate Watergate Committee, asked John Dean, Nixon’s counsel, “What did the president know and when did he know it?” The subject of Baker’s question was a third-rate burglary at the Watergate office building, and its subsequent coverup.

Today, the January 6th Committee asked essentially the same question about Donald Trump. The subject of its inquiry was whether Trump knew the outcome of the 2020 election, and that his claims of fraud were nonsense.

The January 6 committee heard from several Trump administration officials and campaign leaders, who all said that they repeatedly and emphatically told Trump that he had lost the election to Joe Biden. They told Trump that the arguments he had heard from Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, and others about voter fraud, rigging, or miscounting were without merit.

Several told Trump that none of the cases that Giuliani, Powell, and others on his legal team took before sixty two judges (22 of whom were appointed by Republican presidents, ten by Trump himself) contained any credible evidence of fraud, which is why the judges dismissed half of them at their outset and the other half after examining so-called “evidence” on which they were based.

There is no doubt that Trump knew he had lost and that his claims of fraud were absurd. He knew on the night of the election or soon thereafter. The truth didn’t stop him. He viewed the truth as he always has. If it doesn’t help him, it’s an obstacle to be surmounted at any cost.

I hope all Republican lawmakers in America who have sold their soul to Trump in order to hold or gain power watched this hearing. And I hope they feel the shame and humiliation that their constitutional oath demands they feel. They also knew the truth. They chose to ignore it.

I also hope Merrick Garland watched this hearing.

Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon from any criminal proceedings that would emerge from his coverup of the Watergate break-in because Ford thought it best for the nation to put it all “behind us.” But it cannot be best for the nation to put Trump’s attempted coup behind us. An attempted coup cannot possibly remain behind us. Unless Trump is held accountable, it will surely be repeated.