The real story of January 6 isn’t what Trump did – it’s what he didn’t | Moira Donegan

What was Trump doing in those crucial hours when democracy was on the line, when lives were in danger, when our very constitutional system of government hung in the balance? Absolutely nothing

For what was originally supposed to be the final January 6 hearing, the committee was faced with a difficult task. The ninth broadcast was meant to be the culmination of the investigation, with a primetime schedule that would allow the congresspeople to review their findings, repeat their sharpest analyses of Donald Trump's legal violations and moral derelictions, and make their final case to their two most significant audiences - the American public, on the one hand, and the attorney general, Merrick Garland, on the other - that Trump's conduct on and before January 6 merits prosecution.

But they were also meant to do all of this through revelations of Trump's own conduct at the White House in the hours while the riot unfolded, conduct that was remarkable not for Trump's scheming but for his inaction. What was Trump doing during those crucial hours when democracy was on the line, when violence erupted, when lives were in danger and our very constitutional system of government hung in the balance? He did not intervene to stop the insurrection; he did not issue orders or offer help to the military and law enforcement bodies that could have quelled it. Mostly, he just sat on his ass.

Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist