On Jan. 6, 2021, Donald Trump desperately wanted to go to Capitol Hill as part of the then-president’s efforts to overturn his election defeat and claim illegitimate power. We now know, of course, that this did not happen, and the Republican was unable to lead a mob into the halls of Congress for a confrontation.

Trump had to settle for a different approach: He fueled a group of violent rioters with anti-election lies and deployed them to attack his own country’s Capitol.

Today, the presumptive GOP nominee will return to the scene of the crime. If all goes according to plan, Trump will make his first visit to Congress since before the insurrectionist violence of Jan. 6, meeting behind closed doors with Republican lawmakers to discuss campaign messaging and legislative strategy.

The intraparty gathering will take place roughly three blocks from the courthouse where Trump was arraigned last summer on alleged felonies related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. The former president will also be protected today in part by police officers who faced violent pro-Trump rioters during the 2021 assault that he instigated.

Ahead of the Republicans’ private chat with their presumptive nominee, House Speaker Mike Johnson oversaw a partisan stunt that likely made Trump happy — the House GOP majority voted to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt for defying a misguided subpoena — which followed a Capitol Hill press conference in which the party’s top lawmaker read from a decidedly Trumpian script.

A reporter noted that several House Republicans, including Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, ignored subpoenas from the Jan. 6 committee, raising the question of why GOP members would try to punish Garland for doing the same thing. The House speaker replied:

“Oh, I’m so glad you brought up the Jan. 6 committee. We’ll be talking a lot more about that in the coming weeks. There’s been a lot of investigation about that committee. I don’t think it was properly constituted. I don’t think it was properly administered and now that apparently some of the evidence was hidden and some maybe even destroyed, so you will hear much more about that in the days ahead.”

As part of the same Q&A, the Louisiana Republican was also asked whether he believes Trump respects the peaceful transfer of presidential power. “Of course he respects that, we all do,” Johnson responded.

So, a few things.

First, the idea that the bipartisan Jan. 6 committee “hid” and “destroyed” evidence is popular at Mar-a-Lago, but there’s no evidence to bolster such a claim.

Recommended

Maddowblog

Trump administration planning to pay $5 million to the family of a rioter killed on Jan. 6

Steve Benen

Maddowblog

The Jan. 6 attack gets in the way of Republican Party talking points (again)

Steve Benen

Second, the idea that the House select panel wasn’t “properly constituted,” rendering its subpoenas meaningless, is belied by multiple federal court rulings.

Third, if Johnson genuinely believes that Trump “respects” the peaceful transfer of presidential power, I’d encourage the speaker to read both the Jan. 6 committee’s report and the Trump indictment filed by special counsel Jack Smith’s office.

And finally, the idea that “all” Republicans respect the process of outgoing presidents transferring power to their successors is also contradicted by Johnson’s own record. He did, after all, help spearhead an ill-fated effort to convince the Supreme Court to keep Trump in power despite the voters’ verdict, before voting with his party to reject certifying the results of a free and fair election.

Johnson also echoed some of the wilder conspiracy theories about the race, and more than three years later, the Louisiana Republican is still reluctant to acknowledge the legitimacy of the 2020 elections.

But while the House speaker’s rhetoric yesterday was literally unbelievable, it also likely impressed Trump, which for the GOP in 2024, appears more important than honoring reality.