Gov. Chris Sununu swears in Attorney General Gordon MacDonald in 2017. (DOJ Photo)
Attorney General Gordon MacDonald has addressed the effort by the Republican Attorneys General Association to send people to the U.S. Capitol last week to protest the election results. Through Kate Giaquinto, the director of communications for the New Hampshire Office of the Attorney General, he stated that, “in 2017 [he] concluded that, given RAGA’s partisan efforts, it would be inappropriate for him to participate in its activities or that of any of its affiliates.” Gov. Chris Sununu stood by MacDonald and his explanation that he was not involved with the group.
The attorney general’s distancing of himself from the protests came as the events of Jan. 6 have come to haunt Republicans across the nation.
At the very least, last week’s assault on the U.S. Capitol was a case of a protest that got out of control, but many believe it went much farther than that. Steven Harper at BillMoyers.com provides a timeline of events on Jan. 6 that goes beyond what the U.S. Department of Defense has provided in accounting for the delay in backup assistance to the Capitol Police when the mob was threatening violence.
Harper notes that, on November 9, when it was clear that former Vice-President Joe Biden had won the election, President Donald Trump fired Acting Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and replaced him with Christopher C. Miller, an Army retiree who had worked for a defense contractor before becoming Trump’s assistant in 2018. Trump then named three loyalists as top Defense Department officials: Kash Patel, retired army Gen. Anthony Tata, and Ezra Cohen-Watnick. It raised questions as to why Trump would make the changes so late in his presidency.
The article notes that Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy, who reports to Miller, delayed federal assistance to DC Mayor Muriel Bowser for an hour and a half on Jan. 6, and it was another half-hour before he notified the mayor that assistance was on its way. The Defense Department took two hours to approve a request for help from the Virginia National Guard. By then, Trump had tweeted, “This was a fraudulent election, but we can’t play into the hands of these people. We have to have peace. So go home. We love you. You’re very special.”
These facts, along with the series of Trump tweets urging people to go to Washington in the first place, give credence to the theory that Trump was attempting a political coup. His later tweets, urging people to return to Washington on Inauguration Day while noting that he won’t be attending, is seen as an incentive to further violence, prompting social media to disable his accounts.
Meanwhile, attempts to remove Trump from office have reached the point where articles of impeachment have been drawn up; but House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is offering Republicans a way out. She is holding off the vote until tomorrow to give Vice-President Mike Pence and members of the Cabinet a chance to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove the president from power. She also suggested that the request to Pence be approved by Unanimous Consent, which would avoid a roll-call vote — another gesture to help Republicans who might not want to go on the record as directly opposing Trump.
It is an avenue Republicans may want to take, as they find themselves facing a loss of funding from big businesses that formerly gave generous support. Businesses do not want to be seen as supporting violent acts against the government, and are pledging — at least for the time being — that they will not be supporting political agendas.
Despite many Republicans now joining the call for impeachment, many local residents oppose it with so few days left in Trump’s term of office. They see it as further dividing the country at a time when everyone needs to come together to solve more pressing matters.
Meanwhile, the FBI has warned law enforcement officials across the country of planned pro-Trump protests at all 50 state capitals. Trump loyalists who witnessed the success of the takeover of the Capitol building in Washington are looking to keep that momentum going.
For Patriots fans (the football team, that is), it is significant that Bill Belichick, who has been a Trump supporter, turned down the Presidential Medal of Freedom that Trump had offered to him — another former supporter who is distancing himself from Trump in the wake of the Capitol assault.