It’s too soon to know what kind of impact the Jan. 6 select Congressional committee will have on our politics, but no one should doubt that its work is critically important.

It’s important because a credible and fairly complete documentation of Trump’s crimes is an historic imperative. Unless Trump is prosecuted, and I think it unlikely that he will be (more on that below), the Congressional committee will be the only official source of that critically necessary documentation.

I also think that the work of the committee should be at least marginally helpful in building the case against Trump should he decide to run again in 2024.  I say “marginally” because a substantial proportion of American adults—say, 25%, maybe 30%–are utterly resistant to any facts that contravene their adulation of the Great Leader.  But even with all the dirty tricks the GOP hopes to pull off in 2024, and even with a natural GOP advantage in the electoral college, Trump will need something close to the 47% of the popular vote he got last time in order to win.  If the committee convinces even a small portion (say, 10%) of that 47% that Trump is morally and/or psychologically unfit for the presidency, he loses, again.  And I think the committee’s presentation has been effective enough to do that job.  The committee isn’t turning up any really new information, as opposed to filling in the details of what we already knew.  But most Americans weren’t paying all that much attention to what “we” already knew.  There is nothing like putting it all on TV.  Even with all the competing media today, the little screen still has big impact.

I’ve already explained why it is unlikely that Garland will prosecute Trump.  First, the task of proving Trump acted with corrupt intent is by no means easy.  The committee has proved what is provable, that any reasonable person in Trump’s position would have understood that he had lost the election.  But Trump is capable of remarkable feats of self-delusion.  His lawyers would be able to show that Trump’s private utterances were no different from his public ones: he never gave the slightest hint to anyone that he doubted he had won. If, as it appears, Trump actually believed the lies that Giuliani et. al. fed him, can you say that his efforts to overturn the election reflected corrupt intent? Some observers have cited the legal doctrine of “willful blindness” as a basis for prosecuting Trump:

Willful blindness is generally defined as an attempt to avoid liability for a wrongful act by intentionally failing to make reasonable inquiry when faced with the suspicion or awareness of the high likelihood of wrongdoing.  It is a deliberate attempt to keep one’s “head in the sand” when faced with information or facts that create a suspicion or awareness that there is a likelihood of wrongdoing….

Establishing willful blindness in effect negates the defense that the defendant lacked the required intent to commit the crime. Additionally, willful blindness negates the defense that the defendant was unaware that they were committing the crime.

Can a willful blindness prosecution overcome a self-delusion defense?  I have my doubts.

There is another reason to fear that a prosecution of Trump would fail.  What are the chances of assembling a Trump-proof jury?  Recall that recently Steve Bannon was tried for fraud: claiming to raise funds to Build the Wall, he lined his pockets. Eleven out of 12 jurors found the case for the prosecution to be overwhelming, but a twelfth refused even to consider the evidence.  He considered the whole trial a witch hunt; his fellow jurors, biased liberals. So, the result was a hung jury.  This happened in Manhattan. How can any prosecutor be reasonably confident that a jury won’t contain at least one pro-Trump fanatic?  After all, a jury that is reasonably representative of the US population would likely contain three.

None of these considerations will escape Merrick Garland.  Which is why, quite apart from political considerations, he will not prosecute. Which is why the work of the Jan 6 committee is so very, very important.