Republicans are laying a path back to power – and paving it with lies | Rebecca Solnit

Despite having fled the mob on 6 January, many congressmen are openly fleeing the truth about what happened that day

When the insurrectionists of 6 January rampaged through the Capitol, congressman Andrew Clyde of Georgia helped barricade a door, and he fled when the rest of Congress did. A photograph shows him looking panicky, mouth wide open and arm gesticulating wildly, behind what appears to be a security team member with a gun drawn, defending him. But a few months later he declared: Watching the TV footage of those who entered the Capitol and walked through Statuary Hall showed people in an orderly fashion staying between the stanchions and ropes, taking videos, pictures. You know, if you didn't know the TV footage was a video from 6 January, you would actually think it was a normal tourist visit."

Clyde's account of 6 January might be a little more preposterous than those of his fellow Republican legislators. But they all joined him in pretending nothing much had happened and objecting to the investigation of the day's events. After all, they were partly responsible, most of them. It was elected Republicans who supported and spread the earlier lies that Donald Trump had won the election, the lies that fed the insurrection; and then they lied some more about their own words and actions before, during and after. In the immediate aftermath, the then Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, was angry and shaken, declaring: The mob was fed lies. They were provoked by the president." Then he too began the project of walking it all back.

Rebecca Solnit is a Guardian US columnist. Her most recent books are Recollections of My Nonexistence and Orwell's Roses