WSJ Slams Trump's 'Dereliction of Duty,' Calls Jan. 6 Evidence 'Convincing'

The Wall Street Journal's editorial board said evidence presented by the January 6 House select committee during its closing arguments yesterday clearly show former President Donald Trump was guilty of a "dereliction of duty" in the days surrounding last year's Capitol riot—marking yet another departure from the former president and his politics by an institution long seen as a bellwether of the nation's conservative establishment.

In an unsigned editorial on Friday, the board said the new evidence presented by the committee in the final day of hearings—the executive branch's direct knowledge of impending violence at the Capitol among it—provided "convincing" justification for the committee's Thursday decision to issue a subpoena against Trump.

Depending on the outcome of this year's midterm elections, Trump may never need to testify about his role in instigating violence at the Capitol, or what he knew about the potential for violence that day. It is also questionable whether or not he could be charged with crimes for his role. However, the evidence, the editorial board suggested, largely spoke for itself.

"The Jan. 6 committee probably won't get Mr. Trump under oath," they wrote. "But the evidence of his bad behavior is now so convincing that political accountability hardly requires it."

Likely more surprising than the column itself was the source: a newspaper long considered to be the crown jewel of Rupert Murdoch's global media empire that, throughout the January 6 hearings, has chastised a figure it once defended against a "pernicious" impeachment effort by House Democrats in 2020.

Particularly as the conservative media mogul has appeared to have attempted to remain in the former president's good graces.

After urging Trump's resignation in the wake of the riot, the newspaper's editorial board continued to grate him against the mounting evidence over his involvement in instigating the insurrection over the summer, going as far to describe his apparent reluctance to intervene in the attack "horrifying" in an editorial published in late July. The New York Post, another Murdoch property, published a similar editorial that same week.

And following social media posts Trump made saying Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell had a "death wish" for working with Democrats on a compromise to fund the government earlier this fall, The Wall Street Journal criticized his recklessness in yet another editorial, saying his words had the potential to incite violence.

"The 'death wish' rhetoric is ugly even by Mr. Trump's standards and deserves to be condemned," they wrote at the time. "Mr. Trump's apologists claim he merely meant Mr. McConnell has a political death wish, but that isn't what he wrote. It's all too easy to imagine some fanatic taking Mr. Trump seriously and literally, and attempting to kill Mr. McConnell."

Whether the Journal's words sway the public remain to be seen. While three-quarters of Democrats support charging the former president with crimes, 66 percent of Republicans are opposed, according to recent polling by Monmouth University. In addition, more than 8 in 10 Republicans have a favorable view of the former president, according to the poll. Meanwhile, across the country, candidate spending on advertisements leaning on the outrage around January 6, 2021, has been miniscule in comparison to other issues like abortion.

Trump, meanwhile, appears poised to fight the subpoena until it's determined whether his fate will be decided by Republicans or Democrats after the upcoming midterm elections.

"A large percentage of American Citizens, including almost the entire Republican Party, feel that the Election was Rigged and Stolen," Trump wrote in a memo to the select committee on Friday morning. "No work was done by the Committee on Election Fraud. We, and a huge portion of the American people, simply asked that it be a part of your Committee's work. It wasn't."

Newsweek has reached out to Trump's press office for comment.