President Donald J. Trump and his millions of supporters had high hopes for the process that was about to begin on January 6, 2021 in the Capitol Building.

Starting at 1 P.M. that day and continuing over the next 12 to 16 hours in front of millions of viewers worldwide, Congress would begin an extensive examination of evidence presented by Trump's congressional allies of voter irregularities in the battleground states of Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Arizona, Wisconsin, and Nevada that they believed cost Trump the election.

A cornucopia of statistical data, video clips, and affidavits gathered by pro-Trump investigators would show that in these battleground states, tens of thousands of people voted more than once, thousands of non-residents cast ballots, and states sent multiple absentee ballots to individual voters at the same address.

Importantly, the presenters would show how the use of untested voting techniques such as mass mail-in balloting and unsupervised signature-matching contributed to these abuses.

Moreover, the global audience would learn that state attorneys general, governors, and state courts, not state legislatures, instituted these changes to voting laws, in clear violation of Article 1, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution.

Trump's team believed that this evidence would pressure Congress to consider setting aside these electoral slates supposedly won by Biden.

Even if the Democrat-dominated Congress ignored the evidence and certified Biden's victory, the exercise would likely generate significant national public support for passage of election integrity laws that limit mail-in voting and mandate voter identification.   

Trump and his congressional allies had the political winds at their backs.  By December, a large plurality of Americans had been exposed to enough information about 2020 voter irregularities to be convinced that election fraud had placed Joe Biden in the White House.

The morning of January 6, tens of thousands of Trump-supporters gathered at the Ellipse to hear President Trump describe for them and for the millions in the TV audience the evidence Trump's congressional allies were about to present.

We all know what happened next.  Demonstrators gathered 1.5 miles from the Ellipse were somehow able, inexplicably, to breach the Capitol Building barricades and enter the building itself.

As a result of the ensuing chaos at the Capitol, any hope that legislators and a global audience of millions would hear definitive evidence of voter irregularities in the 2020 presidential election was dashed.  Within minutes, the mainstream media and Democrat leaders created an implausible narrative that President Trump had incited a riot that disrupted a congressional session Trump believed would expose electoral shenanigans that deprived him of victory.

Let us pause here for a moment.  The millions who follow crime news; the exploits of real-life investigators such as Jack Paladino; or even the fictional adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Miss Marple, Hercule Poirot, and Nero Wolfe know that the first step in a criminal inquiry is establishing motive.

An investigator examining the mysterious events of that day — say, a special counsel — would first focus on determining who benefited most from the disruption of a session of Congress providing Trump's allies the platform for presenting their evidence to a global audience.

If anyone were to quote to Nero Wolfe the New York Times' allegation that an "insurrection" was "inspired by President Donald J. Trump's false claims of a stolen election," Wolfe would undoubtedly respond with his famous retort: "Are you a dunce, or do you take me for one?"

Wolfe would remind all that since President Trump realistically viewed this session as the final chance to demonstrate that the 2020 election results were tainted by widespread voter irregularities, he had a major stake in ensuring that nothing interfered with Congress's work that day.

Who then benefited from an incursion into the Capitol Building that prevented this disclosure of voter fraud evidence?

Undoubtedly, liberal progressives nationwide were thrilled that Trump was deprived of the opportunity to prove to the world he, not Biden, won the 2020 election.  Equally delighted would be the secret "cabal" of Democrats, never-Trump Republicans, Big Tech, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, union bosses, and BLM, which, according to Time, had been feverishly working together since 2019 to "influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information" to ensure Trump's defeat in 2020.

But motive alone does not prove guilt. We must determine who also had the means and opportunity to frustrate the efforts of Trump and his allies.

As speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi shares responsibility for Capitol security.  On February 15 Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and other Republicans sent a letter to Nancy Pelosi asking her why Capitol Police chief Sund's January 4 request for National Guard support was rejected, and whether Pelosi had had conversations with Sund about his request.

On March 5, Rep. Jerry Carl (R-Ala.) told a reporter that Pelosi "should have played a larger role because she is ultimately responsible for that security."  Carl insisted that while he did not believe "she would encourage" the Capitol fracas, "I think she left security very, very weak for obvious reasons."

Pelosi was not alone in enabling the incursion that day.  Media accounts and congressional reports document the failures of FBI, Capitol, and D.C. police and Defense Department leaders to act on intelligence reports of potential mayhem at the Capitol on January 6 and provide adequate security to prevent breaches that day.

We still don't know why President Trump's requests to deploy 10,000 National Guard troops in D.C. prior to Jan. 6  were consistently rejected or how FBI director Christopher Wray could possibly be unaware of a Norfolk field office report's warning of "specific appeals for violence, including a call for 'war' at the Capitol" on January 6.

Don't expect Pelosi's "9/11-style" commission, chaired by left-leaning anti-Trumper Army lieutenant general Russell Honore, to take a deep dive into any of these questions.  The wording of her charge to the commission to investigate a "domestic terrorist attack upon the United States Capitol Complex" that interfered with "the peaceful transfer of power" clearly signals to the commission that its members focus on the false narrative that Trump's speech incited an insurrection.

Such diversionary tactics will only delay a thorough investigation of the incursion.  Citizen-journalists and investigators are examining evidence and raising questions about the unusual events that day.  The lawsuit recently filed by the family of Ashli Babbitt, the young war veteran killed by a still unidentified Capitol Police officer, promises to reveal even more about how protesters were able to enter the Capitol Building.

The upcoming government trials of the Capitol protestors could backfire on the DOJ if defense attorneys begin asking questions about the inexplicable failure of Capitol police and ultimately the FBI and Pelosi to prevent the incursion.

The DOJ, perhaps mindful of this potential trap of its own making, has now asked the courts for a 60-day delay to build a case against the "insurrectionists."

The future of the American republic and the liberties we enjoy therein depends on uncovering the truth about that day.  The media and the Democrats are using their baseless narrative blaming Trump and his supporters for the incursion as a pretext for militarizing swaths of Washington, D.C. and passing a domestic terrorism bill designed to intimidate critics of government policies and define future political rallies and protests as potential acts of insurrection.

And Big Tech uses it to justify stifling attempts to share with the American citizenry evidence of voter irregularities originally scheduled for public dissemination on January 6, even as Arizona and Georgia open new investigations into voter fraud in the 2020 elections.

America needs an independent entity, perhaps a special counsel, to thoroughly investigate the events of that day and hold accountable those government officials and agencies whose actions either intentionally or unwittingly enabled the chaos at the Capitol.

And let us pledge as a nation to adopt the strictest voting standards and banish forever questionable procedures that only invite widespread citizen mistrust in the electoral process.  Only then can we restore Americans' faith in our election system, the bedrock of our democracy.

Sociologist Michael G. Zey, Ph.D is the author of Ageless Nation, Seizing the Future, and The Future Factor.  Prof., Montclair State University (retired).  www.zey.com.  twitter.com/futurist3000 and also Facebook.

Image via Pxhere.