This week marks one year since the
insurrection at the US Capitol.
The day people broke into the building,
assaulted police officers and tried
to stop Congress from certifying
the 2020 election results.
The investigation is still ongoing and
joining our discussion this morning is
9 news legal analyst Whitney Trailer.
Good morning, Whitney.
Good morning, Corey. Good morning everyone.
So you've been analyzing the polls,
the statistics other data related to
the events from that day one year ago.
What are your takeaways?
There's so many, I think the first
thing that stands out right now is
the attempt by primarily Republicans
to reframe what actually happened.
I heard some of them saying, oh,
it just looked like tourists
going through the capital.
Now, in some ways,
I think that this was somewhat
predictable because it was like a
really a culmination of a month
long fermenting, if you will,
and throughout the pandemic we saw
right wing protests that had been
gathering in statehouses and other.
In other places,
saying you know demanding to be
let in trees and things like that.
I also learned really a lot about the
role Mike Pence played and I think
he was actually really instrumental
because there was an enormous
amount of pressure on him to to
try and do something which he had
no constitutional authority to do.
I also am anticipating maybe we're
going to see more political violence
going forward because there's obviously
a lot of still a lot of discord.
Yeah, I think a lot of that is true,
especially about it.
Kind of like bubbling up for you.
Know the month leading up to what happened.
What's the status of the
arrests and the prosecutions.
Right so Attorney General Merrick Garland.
He's made this a priority.
He has about 140 federal prosecutors
on on the job and they've already
arrested over 725 folks and
mostly those were obstruction of
official proceedings of Congress.
Now 165 have pleaded guilty mostly
to misdemeanors and 30 individuals
have already received either prison
time or some kind of probation.
Now one question about.
The prosecution will be whether
President Trump can be prosecuted.
Many folks are calling for him to
to be prosecuted for his remarks
saying we're gonna go down,
we gotta take the country back with strength,
but I think that's going to be somewhat of
an uphill battle from the political aspect,
but also because he was never
actually in the capital.
So any sort of criminal
prosecution would be tough.
But one primary goal of the January
6th committee researching it.
Is to really create a definitive history
of events and make recommendations of
laws going forward to prevent this.
So I I anticipate we're gonna see,
you know, some some changes going forward.
Yeah, I think so.
Now, in your opinion,
is our democracy at stake?
Is it threatened?
Man, it's a great question.
I've been looking at the a lot of
scholarship on this and and a lot
of folks are looking at some of the
preconditions of civil strife and they're
saying we're in dangerous territory,
so there's a group out of Stockholm,
the international institution for
democracy and they have said we
are no longer a democracy where a
quote backsliding democracy now.
The good news is our institutions
held right, the courts,
the local election rules and officials.
Even the military,
so you know a lot of folks are saying no,
we're not headed towards
fascism or something like that.
But they're saying we are.
We may see these episodes of
political violence that could include,
you know, bombings, assassinations,
rallies, where people are killed.
So it's it's a scary place.
And and our institutions need
to continue to hold up.
Where
do you think we go from here?
Well, as I've said many times,
Corey with you and I we need
to lower the temperature.
You know, I think we're going to.
We have to really kind of slow
down and increase the conversation.
I think we have to be honest about
actually what happened so that we can,
you know, prevent it.
Again, some folks are saying, hey man,
we may look at another civil war,
but it won't be like what
we saw in the 1860s,
but it may be these sort of persistent
acts of violence destabilizing things,
you know, political violence,
those kind of things so.
We just have to like I said,
be willing to speak the truth
and really kind of lower the
temperature and let this be a guide.
I remember a year ago watching everything
unfold and the the the pit in my stomach.
It was so distrustful,
so hopefully we recognize that and and,
you know, come back to the
the the lack of polarization.
Come back to you know a place where
we can actually have conversations in.
And lower the temperature a little bit.
Yeah,
I know we're so divided right now and
that was a loaded question for sure.
I apologize for that Whitney as always.
Really appreciated. Happy Friday. Happy
Friday, thank you. Good to be here.