Congress' role in Jan. 6 justice should be reform

The prime value of Thursday’s congressional hearings on last year’s Capitol insurrection — the ninth in a series and the last before the midterm elections — is to be found in its clear exposure of how an unprecedented attempt to retroactively cancel a U.S. election began before votes were even counted.

Nobody can deny after seeing the testimony of White House insiders, videos from the scene, tweets from the U.S. Secret Service, and on-the-record remarks from campaign operatives, that each stage of the nastiest power grab in memory was plotted in advance and carried out with President Donald Trump’s direction and approval.

Leaders of the Jan. 6 inquiry, Reps. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), made clear from the outset months ago that it is the job of the Justice Department to decide matters of criminal prosecution. It is hard to imagine based on the way the panel described what happened that day that no referrals at all will be made from the committee by the end of this process. We still won’t know for a while.

After this vivid 2½-hour presentation, the committee members voted, 9-0, to subpoena Trump for documents and testimony under oath. Most likely, he can stall and delay this official demand but it was an appropriate if symbolic procedural move for the panel. After all, the ex-president is the one who most needs to answer as an individual for actions and provocations taken against the advice of his inner circle.

There were stages to Trump’s cling-to-power plan. Convicted-and-pardoned adviser Roger Stone told backers that even if the president apparently lost, the thing to do was act like he won. There was video of Steve Bannon, since convicted of contempt of Congress, speaking before the election about how Trump might challenge the results.

There were several indications on display Thursday of how Trump passingly acknowledged in private that he lost and heard it over and over from advisers but still propagated made-up stories about rigged voting machines, suitcases full of ballots retrieved from under tables, and the like.

Perhaps as dangerous as his ignoring appeals from his own backers to call off the mob that afternoon was the gambit of pressuring Vice President Mike Pence to block the congressional certification of Joe Biden’s win and recruiting fake “electors” to replace the legal ones.

That’s where Congress can move right away to avert governmental crises like this. The Electoral Count Reform Act ensures electoral votes tallied by Congress accurately reflect each state’s public vote for president. Judicial reviews would take place quickly. It would clarify that the vice president’s role is what most people assumed before 2021 — strictly ministerial.

Lawmakers legislate and prosecutors go after crimes. The legislative branch should move forward with the ECRA before it’s too late while looking for additional ways to keep other losing incumbents from wrongly clinging to power.