Whether Trump testifies or not, the January 6 committee has issued a devastating indictment

The best of Voices delivered to your inbox every week - from controversial columns to expert analysis Sign up for our free weekly Voices newsletter for expert opinion and columns Sign up to our free weekly Voices newsletter SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. As Chairman Bennie Thompson said, the former president is “the one person at the center of the story of what happened on January 6.” Not only that, but everyone around Mr Trump’s administration knew his actions could lead to violence – including the Secret Service, whose internal emails showed that the organization knew that attendees at his “Stop the Steal” rally at the White House Ellipse were armed, and that these were the people whom Mr Trump goaded into marching onto the Capitol. Similarly, the panel demonstrated that when the Supreme Court summarily threw out Mr Trump’s challenge to the election results, he told then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows that “I don’t want people to know we lost” – and asked communications staffer Alyssa Farah, “Can you believe I effing lost to this guy?” This, Representative Pete Aguilar said, illustrates that there is “no scenario” wherein Mr Trump’s actions could be seen as “benign”. But perhaps the most damning evidence of the whole presentation that clearly pointed to Mr Trump’s culpability was footage of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and now-Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on the phone with the Secretary of Defense, Vice President Mike Pence and then-governor of Virginia Ralph Northam, asking for National Guard troops and police officers to be sent to defend the US Capitol as they hunkered down in a secure room. “The speaker of the United States House of Representatives.” But the footage – along with a clip shown on CNN in which she said she wanted to clock Mr Trump herself if he came to Capitol – shows that Ms Pelosi, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and Mr Schumer took every step possible to insure not only that the Capitol would be secure, but that they could finish the business of certifying the 2020 presidential election results.