James Sasso is a lawyer who served as an investigator on the January 6 committee. This week he published an op-ed arguing for broad political reforms to address some of the deep distrust he found while interviewing witnesses who stormed the Capitol. Sasso says chronic, long-term trends in American politics are making people vulnerable to the cynical tactics former President Donald Trump represents. That may be true, but it also can distract from the urgency of violent authoritarianism, like the time this week Trump boosted more calls for violence in his name. I called up Sasso to chat about the lessons of the committee's work and about what he sees as the long-term path out of Trumpism.
You and I have been fumbling around with our Zoom call here for about seven minutes. Please tell me high-profile depositions didn't go like this in the January 6 committee.
Sometimes at the beginning of the deposition, we had to spend 10 to 15 minutes dealing with witnesses trying to get their microphones to work. Or trying to get the screen to work. We'd have to pause in the middle to figure out why a screen froze or someone started echoing or their screen went blank, in the middle of very important answers. Somebody would just freeze and you throw your hands up in the air, but that's the world we were operating in.
That's not the world I envisioned when I was watching (former White House lawyer) Eric Herschmann say, "I told him, 'Get a great effin' criminal defense lawyer, you're gonna need it.'" But anyway, you spent most of your time looking at the actual attack, as opposed to the broad coup attempt?
We were divided up into color teams. I was on the "red" team, where we focused on the riot itself. But part of that was the domestic violent extremist groups, like the Oathkeepers and Proud Boys, Three Percenters. They were there planning to storm the Capitol no matter what happened. We also looked at the rally planners. I also looked at President Trump's speech and how it came together. But mostly I looked at what you'd call foot soldiers in the game that the former president was playing.
The committee's report is narrowly focused, mostly on Trump and his deep role in the riot and the coup. It sounds like you put yourself in the camp of people who say the committee missed a vital opportunity to address the deeper issues in American society that led to the insurrection?
I wouldn't put myself in that camp. I think we were right to focus on President Trump. We didn't have the time or the resources to conduct a thorough, historical, sociological political sciences report for 50 years to explain all of the different things that have enabled someone like Donald Trump to become president in the first place, and then to convince so many millions of Americans that the election was stolen, and then push several thousand of them to storm the Capitol. It wasn't as if we were ignoring these broader themes. Our hope is that historians, the public, reporters, will be able to keep answering those larger questions.
You're concerned about the regular, everyday people who distrusted government so much they followed Trump and attacked. We have a long history of distrust in government in this county. But it doesn't always result in a mob trying to stop the peaceful transfer of power, or the bombing of a federal building. So what's different here?
You're right, distrusting government isn't new at all. But what's changed that can make it worse? Clearly social media, the way algorithms amplify information, has warped and heightened distrust. If you lean conspiratorial, this model will keep pushing you further down a rabbit hole and eventually, you believe in QAnon. On top of that, income inequality is as bad or worse than in the Gilded Age. And there's a lot of research that shows income inequality drives polarization and it drives people who feel left out to distrust what government is doing. Racial animus is layered on top of that, clearly. So there's all these things happening at once to make people open to being hijacked by opportunistic politicians like Donald Trump.
The lazy media diagnosis of "economic anxiety" to explain Trumpism died a while ago. To be honest, I'd be surprised if that's what your investigative work found was driving rioters.
I could see how people would react that way. That's not what I'm trying to do. But I don't think we can afford to ignore people who do feel left out in that way. It's just that the explanation for why they're left out isn't always as simple as "blue collar worker in Ohio lost a job to globalization." It's also very likely a rich person in Georgia, who harbors racial animus for a long time and found an outlet. And it was for someone who has seen the system as rigged, even if they are people who are benefiting from it.
A rich white person from Georgia with an authoritarian streak who manages to feel left out. I see what you did there. Marjorie Taylor Greene is a big coup backer, to put it mildly. By the way, how are you feeling about the various grand juries and special grand juries that are operating now?
That is the ultimate question. I am happy that law enforcement agencies are doing their job at the state level and it seems from my armchair view that the DOJ is moving forward. I have not been a prosecutor so I don't have much experience there. I am glad that our investigation sort of came to light a spark to get them moving perhaps a little faster.
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