No laws will stop January 6 from happening again because former US President Donald Trump has become “a cult leader of a militaristic, violent force that will ignore the law, “American political analyst Myles Hoenig has said.
No laws will stop January 6 from happening again because former US President Donald Trump has become a cult leader encouraged by a militaristic, violent force that will ignore the law, American political analyst Myles Hoenig has said.
Hoenig said in an interview with Press TV on Thursday that Trump is “breaking new grounds in trying to re-write standard procedures,” after Trump filed a federal lawsuit against the January 6 select committee in an attempt to block the panel from obtaining his administration's records from the US National Archives. The committee has requested for White House call logs, schedules and other documents on January 6.
The Democratic White House on Tuesday rejected Trump’s claims of executive privilege over documents requested by the congressional committee investigating the January 6 assault on the US Capitol by hundreds of Trump’s supporters who were protesting against the controversial victory of Joe Biden, the current American president.
White House counsel Dana Remus on Monday directed the National Archives to turn over the Trump-era documents to the committee and wrote that Biden consulted with the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel and decided that Trump’s privilege assertion “is not justified,” the Washington-based The Hill newspaper reported.
Trump’s supporters stormed the US Capitol on January 6 in the hope of preventing lawmakers from certifying Biden's victory, thus overturning the outcome of the 2020 presidential election but to no avail.
Trump, who believes that the election was rigged by the US establishment in favor of Biden, has said that the 2020 presidential election was “the greatest Election Hoax in history.”
‘Even Nixon knew that executive privilege is not guaranteed’
“One would think that executive privilege belongs to an executive, not someone who once was. However, as always, Donald Trump is breaking new grounds in trying to re-write standard procedures. This is likely to go to the courts, and no guarantees for anyone if it makes it to the Supreme Court, but with the Congress likely to revert to Republican control in 2023 this issue would be moot but precedent-setting,” said Hoenig.
“Even sitting presidents aren’t immune from having such privilege taken from them. President Nixon learned the hard way that executive privilege does not permit the concealing of evidence of a crime (Watergate tapes). Trump used executive privilege successfully but only because his opposition was so weak,” he added.
‘The right to know versus the right to conceal’
“This issue is a fight between the public’s right to know versus an individual’s right to conceal. Biden is using the argument that revealing the papers from the former president serves a legislative purpose, to pass future legislation to prevent another January 6. For this, he is misguided. No laws will stop January 6 from happening again. Although both sides engage in alternate realities (just look at the invented Russiagate), Trump’s people are a force, even a militaristic, violent force that will ignore the law as they see it as just another attack on them and their cult leader, Trump,” the analyst said.
‘Corporate fascism is alive and well in America’
“The clock is running out on understanding the complete history of what took place ten months ago. Releasing the documents held by the National Archives and forcing individuals to speak before Congress would go a long way, but not likely in a way for healing. Trump has a stranglehold on at least a quarter of the voting population," he said.
"Any attempt to paint him and his supporters (especially of those sitting in Congress) as insurrectionists or seditionists would be good for the history books but would likely backfire politically. Corporate fascism is alive and well in America but outright black-shirted, boot strapping brown-shirted fascists (as we have seen with the likes of Kyle Rittenhouse, the Proud Boys, etc.) are more likely to prevail,” he concluded.