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Washington’s Nightmare

The Atlantic

www.theatlantic.com › magazine › archive › 2024 › 11 › george-washington-nightmare-donald-trump › 679946

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Last November, during a symposium at Mount Vernon on democracy, John Kelly, the retired Marine Corps general who served as Donald Trump’s second chief of staff, spoke about George Washington’s historic accomplishments—his leadership and victory in the Revolutionary War, his vision of what an American president should be. And then Kelly offered a simple, three-word summary of Washington’s most important contribution to the nation he liberated.

“He went home,” Kelly said.

The message was unambiguous. After leaving the White House, Kelly had described Trump as a “person that has no idea what America stands for and has no idea what America is all about.” At Mount Vernon, he was making a clear point: People who are mad for power are a mortal threat to democracy. They may hold different titles—even President—but at heart they are tyrants, and all tyrants share the same trait: They never voluntarily cede power.

The American revolutionaries feared a powerful executive; they had, after all, just survived a war with a king. Yet when the Founders gathered in 1787 to draft the Constitution, they approved a powerful presidential office, because of their faith in one man: Washington.

Washington’s life is a story of heroic actions, but also of temptations avoided, of things he would not do. As a military officer, Washington refused to take part in a plot to overthrow Congress. As a victorious general, he refused to remain in command after the war had ended. As president, he refused to hold on to an office that he did not believe belonged to him. His insistence on the rule of law and his willingness to return power to its rightful owners—the people of the United States—are among his most enduring gifts to the nation and to democratic civilization.

Forty-four men have succeeded Washington so far. Some became titans; others finished their terms without distinction; a few ended their service to the nation in ignominy. But each of them knew that the day would come when it would be their duty and honor to return the presidency to the people.

All but one, that is.

Donald Trump and his authoritarian political movement represent an existential threat to every ideal that Washington cherished and encouraged in his new nation. They are the incarnation of Washington’s misgivings about populism, partisanship, and the “spirit of revenge” that Washington lamented as the animating force of party politics. Washington feared that, amid constant political warfare, some citizens would come to “seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual,” and that eventually a demagogue would exploit that sentiment.

Today, America stands at such a moment. A vengeful and emotionally unstable former president—a convicted felon, an insurrectionist, an admirer of foreign dictators, a racist and a misogynist—desires to return to office as an autocrat. Trump has left no doubt about his intentions; he practically shouts them every chance he gets. His deepest motives are to salve his ego, punish his enemies, and place himself above the law. Should he regain the Oval Office, he may well bring with him the experience and the means to complete the authoritarian project that he began in his first term.

Many Americans might think of George Washington as something like an avatar, too distant and majestic to be emulated. American culture has encouraged this distance by elevating him beyond earthly stature: A mural in the Capitol Rotunda depicts him literally as a deity in the clouds. In the capital city that bears Washington’s name, other presidents such as Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson are represented with human likenesses; Franklin D. Roosevelt even smiles at us from his wheelchair. Washington is represented by a towering, featureless obelisk. Such faceless abstractions make it easy to forget the difficult personal choices that he made, decisions that helped the United States avoid the many curses that have destroyed other democracies.

For decades, I taught Washington’s military campaigns and the lessons of his leadership to military officers when I was a professor at the U.S. Naval War College. And yet I, too, have always felt a distance from the man himself. In recent months, I revisited his life. I read his letters, consulted his biographers, and walked the halls at Mount Vernon. I found a man with weaknesses and shortcomings, but also a leader who possessed qualities that we once expected—and should again demand—from our presidents, especially as the United States confronts the choice between democracy and demagoguery.

The votes cast in November will be more consequential than those in any other American election in more than a century. As we judge the candidates, we should give thought to Washington’s example, and to three of Washington’s most important qualities and the traditions they represent: his refusal to use great power for his own ends, his extraordinary self-command, and, most of all, his understanding that national leaders in a democracy are only temporary stewards of a cause far greater than themselves.

I

A CITIZEN, NOT A CAESAR

Popular military leaders can become a menace to a democratic government if they have the loyalty of their soldiers, the love of the citizenry, and a government too weak to defend itself. Even before his victory in the Revolutionary War, Washington had all of these, and yet he chose to be a citizen rather than a Caesar.

It is difficult, in our modern era of ironic detachment and distrust, to grasp the intensity of the reverence that surrounded the General (as he would be called for the rest of his life) wherever he went. “Had he lived in the days of idolatry,” a Pennsylvania newspaper stated breathlessly during the war, Washington would have “been worshiped as a god.” He was more than a war hero. In 1780, when Washington passed through a town near Hartford, Connecticut, a French officer traveling with him recorded the scene:

We arrived there at night; the whole of the population had assembled from the suburbs, we were surrounded by a crowd of children carrying torches, reiterating the acclamations of the citizens; all were eager to approach the person of him whom they called their father, and pressed so closely around us that they hindered us from proceeding.

Washington was addressed—by Americans and visiting foreigners alike—as “Your Excellency” almost as often as he was by his rank. In Europe, a French admiral told him, he was celebrated as the “deliverer of America.” Alexander Hamilton, his aide-de-camp during the war, later described Washington as a man “to whom the world is offering incense.”

At the war’s outset, Washington had believed that defeat and death—whether on the battlefield or on a gibbet in London—were more likely than glory. He worried that his wife, Martha, might also face threats from British forces, and was so concerned about her reaction to his appointment as commander of the Continental Army that he waited days before writing to tell her about it. Patrick Henry described a chance encounter with Washington on the street in Philadelphia, shortly after the vote approving Washington’s command. Tears welled in the new general’s eyes. “Remember, Mr. Henry, what I now tell you,” Washington said. “From the day I enter upon the command of the American armies, I date my fall, and the ruin of my reputation.”

Instead, Washington’s reputation grew. Yet despite his surprising successes as a general and his rise as the symbol of American liberty, he never allowed the world’s incense to intoxicate him. Although he was a man of fierce ambition, his character was tempered by humility and bound up in his commitment to republican ideals: He led an American army only in the name of the American people and its elected representatives, and he never saw that army as his personal property. His soldiers were citizens, like him, and they were serving at his side in a common cause. “When we assumed the soldier,” he said to a group of New York representatives shortly before he took command, “we did not lay aside the citizen,” a sentiment that he repeated throughout the war.

In the 18th century, Washington’s deference to the people’s representatives and the rule of law would have seemed almost nonsensical to his European counterparts. Most military officers of the time served for life, after swearing allegiance to royal sovereigns whose authority was said to be ordained by God. Often drawn from the ranks of the nobility, they saw themselves as a superior caste and found little reason to assure civilians of their good intentions.

Washington, however, insisted that his men conduct themselves like soldiers who tomorrow would have to live with the people they were defending today. Despite continual supply shortages, he forbade his troops from plundering goods from the population—including from his Tory adversaries. Washington’s orders were prudent in the short term; his army needed both supplies and the goodwill of the people. But they also represented his careful investment in America’s future: Once the war was over, the new nation would depend on comity and grace among all citizens, regardless of what side they’d supported.

The painter John Trumbull’s depiction of George Washington resigning his military commission to Congress in 1783 (World History Archive / Alamy)

Most American presidents have had some sort of military experience. A few, like Washington, were genuine war heroes. All of them understood that military obedience to the rule of law and to responsible civilian authority is fundamental to the survival of democracy. Again, all of them but one.

During his term as president, Trump expected the military to be loyal—but only to him. He did not understand (or care) that members of the military swear an oath to the Constitution, and that they are servants of the nation, not of one man in one office. Trump viewed the military like a small child surveying a shelf of toy soldiers, referring to “my generals” and ordering up parades for his own enjoyment and to emphasize his personal control.

Trump was more than willing to turn the American military against its own people. In 2020, for instance, he wanted the military to attack protesters near the White House. “Beat the fuck out of them,” the president told the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley. “Just shoot them.” Both Milley and Defense Secretary Mark Esper (a former military officer himself) talked their boss out of opening fire on American citizens.

[From the November 2023 issue: How Mark Milley held the line]

Senior officers during Trump’s term chose loyalty to the Constitution over loyalty to Donald Trump and remained true to Washington’s legacy. Such principles baffle Trump—all principles seem to baffle Trump, and he especially does not understand patriotism or self-sacrifice. He is, after all, the commander in chief who stood in Arlington National Cemetery, looked around at the honored dead in one of the country’s most sacred places, and said: “I don’t get it. What was in it for them?”

A year ago, Trump suggested that Milley should be executed for actions he’d taken in uniform, including reassuring China of America’s political stability both before and after January 6, 2021. Esper has said that he thinks he and Milley, along with other senior defense officials and military officers, could be arrested and imprisoned if Trump returns to office. In a second term, Trump would appoint senior military leaders willing to subvert the military and the Constitution to serve his impulses. He already tried, in his first term, to bring such people to the White House, naming Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, for example, as his national security adviser. Flynn was fired after only 23 days for misleading White House officials about lying to the FBI and now travels the country promoting outlandish conspiracy theories. Trump has praised Flynn and promised to bring him back in a second term.

Trump is desperate to reclaim power, and he is making threats about what could happen if the American people refuse to give it to him. Washington, even before he became president, was offered an almost certain chance to take ultimate power, and he refused.

In 1783, Washington was camped with most of the Continental Army in Newburgh, New York. Congress, as usual, was behind on its financial obligations to American soldiers, and rumbles were spreading that it was time to take matters into military hands. Some men talked of deserting and leaving the nation defenseless. Others wanted to head to Philadelphia, disband Congress, and install Washington as something like a constitutional monarch.

Washington allowed the soldiers to meet so they could discuss their grievances. Then he unexpectedly showed up at the gathering and unloaded on his men. Calling the meeting itself “subversive of all order and discipline,” he reminded them of the years of loyalty and personal commitment to them. He blasted the dark motives of a letter circulating among the troops, written by an anonymous soldier, that suggested that the army should refuse to disarm if Congress failed to meet their needs. “Can he be,” Washington asked, “a friend to the army? Can he be a friend to this country?”

Then, in a moment of calculated theater meant to emphasize the toll that eight years of war had taken on him, he reached into his pocket for a pair of eyeglasses, ostensibly to read a communication from a member of Congress. “Gentlemen,” he said, “you must pardon me, for I have not only grown gray but almost blind in the service of my country.” Some of the men, already chastened by Washington’s reproaches, broke into tears. The Newburgh conspiracy, from that moment, was dead.

The presidential historian Stephen Knott told me that Washington could have walked into that same meeting and, with a nod of his head, gained a throne. “A lesser man might have been tempted to lead the army to Philadelphia and pave the way for despotism,” Knott said. Instead, Washington crushed the idea and shamed the conspirators.

Nine months later, Washington stood in the Maryland statehouse, where Congress was temporarily meeting, and returned control of the army to the elected representatives of the United States of America. He asked to be granted “the indulgence of retiring from the service of my country” and handed over the document containing his military commission. Washington, in the words of the historian Joseph Ellis, had completed “the greatest exit in American history.”

Jean-Antoine Houdon’s sculpture of George Washington makes explicit reference to the Roman military leader Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus, who relinquished power and returned to his farm after delivering victory on the battlefield. (iStock / Getty)

Decades ago, the scholar S. E. Finer asked a question that shadows every civilian government: “Instead of asking why the military engage in politics, we ought surely ask why they ever do otherwise.” The answer, at least in the United States, lies in the traditions instituted by Washington. Because of his choices during and after the Revolution, the United States has had the luxury of regarding military interference in its politics as almost unthinkable. If Trump returns to office with even a handful of praetorians around him, Americans may realize only too late what a rare privilege they have enjoyed.

II

A MAN IN COMMAND OF HIMSELF

Washington’s steadfast refusal to grasp for power was rooted not only in his civic beliefs, but also in a strength of character that Americans should demand in any president.

When he returned to Mount Vernon after the war, Washington thought he was returning permanently to the life of a Virginia planter. His mansion is small by modern standards, and his rooms have a kind of placidity to them, a sense of home. If you visited without knowing who once lived there, you could believe that you were wandering the property of any moderately successful older gentleman of the colonial era, at least until you noticed little details, such as the key to the Bastille—a gift from Washington’s friend the Marquis de Lafayette—hanging in the hall.

The estate is lovingly cared for today, but in 1783, after nearly a decade of Washington’s absence, it was a mess, physically and financially. Its fields and structures were in disrepair. Washington, who had refused a salary for his military service, faced significant debts. (When Lafayette invited him in 1784 to visit France and bask in its adulation, Washington declined because he couldn’t afford the trip.)

[Barton Gellman: What happened to Michael Flynn?]

But Washington’s stretched finances did not matter much to the people who showed up regularly at his door to seek a moment with the great man—and a night or two at his home. Customs of the time demanded that proper visitors, usually those with an introduction from someone known to the householder, were to be entertained and fed. Washington observed these courtesies as a matter of social duty, even when callers lacked the traditional referral. More than a year would pass after his return to Mount Vernon before he and Martha finally enjoyed a dinner alone.

Like many of the other Founders, Washington embraced the virtues of the ancient Stoic thinkers, including self-control, careful introspection, equanimity, and dispassionate judgment. He tried to overcome petty emotions, and to view life’s difficulties and triumphs as merely temporary conditions.

In the words of his vice president, John Adams, Washington had “great self-command”—the essential quality that distinguished him even among the giants of the Revolution and made him a model for future generations of American political and military leaders. Like anyone else, of course, he was beset by ordinary human failings. As his letters and the accounts of friends and family reveal, he was at times seized by vanity, anxiety, and private grievances. He was moody. His occasional bursts of temper could be fearsome. He never forgot, and rarely forgave, personal attacks.

But Washington was “keenly aware” of his own shortcomings, Lindsay Chervinsky, the director of the George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon, told me, and this self-knowledge, bolstered by his sense of personal honor, governed nearly all of Washington’s actions. He rarely allowed his pride to congeal into arrogance, nor his insecurities to curdle into self-pity. He refused to carry on public feuds—or to tilt the power he held against those who had slighted him.

Washington’s embrace of Stoicism helped him to step outside himself and confront the snares of his own ego and appetites, and especially to resist many of the temptations of power. His favorite play, Cato, was about Cato the Younger, a noted Stoic thinker and Roman senator who opposed the rise of Julius Caesar. Washington studied the examples of the great Roman republicans, particularly the story of Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus, the Roman military leader who saved his nation on the battlefield and then returned to his farm. (Washington would later serve as the first president of the Society of the Cincinnati, an organization of Revolutionary War veterans.) As the president and CEO of Mount Vernon, Douglas Bradburn, told me during a visit to the estate, Washington genuinely regarded the Roman general as an example to be followed.

The Stoic insistence on merciless honesty, both with oneself and with others, is what allowed Washington to act with vigor but without venom, to make decisions without drama—another of the many grim differences between the character of the first president and that of the 45th. The Washington biographer Ron Chernow writes that “there was cunning in Washington’s nature but no low scheming. He never reneged on promises and was seldom duplicitous or underhanded. He respected the public” and “did not provoke people needlessly.” He desired recognition of his service, but hated boasting.

Americans have long prized these qualities in their best presidents. Trump has none of them.

Washington’s personal code had one severe omission. I had to take only a short walk from the mansion at Mount Vernon to see the reconstructed living quarters of some of the 300 enslaved people who worked his fields. Like other southern Founders, Washington did not let his commitment to freedom interfere with his ownership of other human beings. His views on slavery changed over time, especially after he commanded Black troops in battle, and he arranged in his will to free his slaves. But to the end of his life, Washington mostly left his thoughts on the institution out of public debates: His goal was to build a republic, not to destroy slavery. He did not right all the wrongs around him, nor all of his own.

But Washington did set the standard of patriotic character for his successors. Some failed this test, and long before Trump’s arrival, other presidents endured harsh criticism for their belligerence and imperious ego. Andrew Jackson, for example, was a coarse and rabid partisan who infuriated his opponents; the New York jurist James Kent in 1834 excoriated him as “a detestable, ignorant, reckless, vain and malignant tyrant,” the product of a foolish experiment in “American elective monarchy.”

Many presidents, however, have emulated Washington in various ways. We rightly venerate the wartime leadership of men such as Lincoln and FDR, but others also undertook great burdens and made hard decisions selflessly and without complaint.

When a 1980 mission to liberate American hostages held in Iran ended in flames and the death of eight Americans in the desert, President Jimmy Carter addressed the nation. “It was my decision,” he said, both to attempt a rescue and to cancel the operation when it became impossible to continue. “The responsibility is fully my own.” Almost 20 years earlier, John F. Kennedy had taken the heat for the disastrous effort to land an anti-Communist invasion at Cuba’s Bay of Pigs, when he could have shifted blame to his predecessor, Dwight Eisenhower, from whom he’d inherited the plan. The day after JFK was assassinated, Lyndon B. Johnson began his tenure as president not by affirming his new power, but by convening Kennedy’s Cabinet and affirming instead the slain president’s greatness. He asked them all to stay on. “I rely on you,” he said. “I need you.”

Gerald Ford ended up in the Oval Office due to the failures of Richard Nixon, unelected and with no popular mandate to govern. And yet, at a time of great political and economic stress, he led the nation steadily and honorably. He pardoned Nixon because he thought it was in the nation’s best interest to end America’s “long national nightmare,” despite knowing that he would likely pay a decisive price at the polls.

President Joe Biden displayed a common sentiment with these leaders when he declined to run for reelection in July. Biden, reportedly hurt that he was being pushed to step aside, nonetheless put defeating Trump above his own feelings and refused to exhibit any bitterness. “I revere this office,” he told the nation, “but I love my country more.”

None of these men was perfect. But they followed Washington’s example by embracing their duty and accepting consequences for their decisions. (Even Nixon chose to resign rather than mobilize his base against his impeachment, a decision that now seems noble compared with Trump’s entirely remorseless reaction to his two impeachments, his inability to accept his 2020 loss, and his warnings of chaos should he lose again.) They refused to present themselves as victims of circumstance. They reassured Americans that someone was in charge and willing to take responsibility.

Trump is unlike all of the men who came before him. Among his many other ignoble acts, he will be remembered for uttering a sentence, as thousands of Americans fell sick and died during a pandemic, that would have disgusted Washington and that no other American president has ever said, nor should ever say again: “I don’t take responsibility at all.”

III

A PRESIDENT, NOT A KING

One of the defining characteristics of Washington’s approach to the presidency was that he was always trying to leave it. He had been drawn back into public life reluctantly, attending and presiding over the 1787 Constitutional Convention only after a violent tax revolt in Massachusetts, known as Shays’s Rebellion, convinced him that the republic was still fragile and in need of a more capable system of government. Washington returned to Mount Vernon after the meeting in Philadelphia, but he already knew from discussions at the convention that he would be asked to stand for election to the new presidency as America’s only truly unifying figure. His 1789 victory in the Electoral College was unanimous.

Washington had no intention of remaining president for the rest of his life, even if some of his contemporaries had other ideas. “You are now a king under a different name,” Washington’s aide James McHenry happily wrote to him after that first election, but Washington was determined to serve one term at most and then go back to Mount Vernon. In the end, he would be persuaded to remain for a second term by Hamilton, Jefferson, and others who said that the new nation needed more time to solidify under his aegis. (“North and south,” Jefferson told him, “will hang together if they have you to hang on.”)

An 1895 engraving of Shays’s Rebellion. The violent tax revolt convinced Washington that the United States was still fragile and drew him back into public life. (M&N / Alamy)

As he assumed the presidency, Washington was concerned that even a whiff of kingly presumption could sink America’s new institutions. Lindsay Chervinsky told me that Washington doubted the judgment and prudence of Vice President Adams not only because the vocal and temperamental Bostonian generally irritated him—Adams irritated many of his colleagues—but also because he had proposed bloated and pretentious titles for the chief executive, such as “His Highness, the President of the United States of America, and Protector of their Liberties.” Washington preferred the simpler title adopted by the House of Representatives: “President of the United States.”

The American people trusted Washington, but they didn’t trust an embryonic government created in a matter of months by a small group of men in Philadelphia. (When Washington took office, Rhode Island and North Carolina hadn’t even ratified the Constitution yet.) The first president sought to allay these suspicions by almost immediately undertaking a kind of reassurance tour, traveling throughout the states—the Virginian shrewdly chose to start in New England—to show Americans that the Constitution and the nation’s commander in chief were not threats to their liberties.

Donald Trump also traveled America once he was elected. After one of the most divisive presidential contests in modern American history, Trump embarked on a kind of victory tour through the states that had voted for him, and only those states. His campaign called it a “thank you” tour, but Trump’s speeches—praising his supporters, bashing his enemies—left no doubt about his intentions. “We are really the people who love this country,” he told a crowd in Mobile, Alabama. He was assuring his followers that although he now had to govern the entire nation, he was their president, an insidious theme that would lead directly to the tragic events of January 6.

In his first years in office, Washington could have shaped the new presidency to his liking. His fellow Founders left much in Article II of the Constitution vague; they disagreed among themselves about the powers that the executive branch should hold, and they were willing to let Washington fill in at least some of the blanks regarding the scope of presidential authority. This choice has bedeviled American governance, allowing successive chief executives to widen their own powers, especially in foreign policy. Recently, the Supreme Court further loosened the constraints of the office, holding in Trump v. United States that presidents have immunity for anything that could be construed as an “official act.” This decision, publicly celebrated by Trump, opens frightening opportunities for presidents to rule corruptly and with impunity.

Washington fought for the office rather than its occupant. Sharply cognizant that his every action could constitute a precedent, he tried through his conduct to imbue the presidency with the strength of his own character. He took pains not to favor his relatives and friends as he made political appointments, and he shunned gifts, fearing that they might be seen as bribes. He mostly succeeded: Those who came after him were constrained by his example, even if at times unwillingly, at least until the election of 2016.

Washington believed that the American people had the right to change their Constitution, but he had absolutely no tolerance for insurrectionists who would violently defy its authority. During his first term, Congress passed a new tax on distilled spirits, a law that sparked revolts among farmers in western Pennsylvania. What began as sporadic clashes grew into a more cohesive armed challenge to the authority of the United States government—the largest, as Ron Chernow noted, until the Civil War. In September 1794, Washington issued an official proclamation that this “Whiskey Rebellion” was an act of “treasonable opposition.” The issue, he declared, was “whether a small portion of the United States shall dictate to the whole Union.” He warned other Americans “not to abet, aid, or comfort the insurgents.”

In a show of force, Washington took personal command of a militia of more than 12,000 men and began a march to Carlisle, Pennsylvania—the only time a sitting president has ever led troops in the field. He had no wish to shed American blood, but he was ready to fight, and the rebellion dissipated quickly in the face of this military response. Later, in the first use of the pardon power, Washington spared two of the insurgents from the death penalty, but only after the legal system had run its course and they had been convicted of treason.

As the president’s second term neared its end, his advisers again implored him to remain in office, and again argued that the republic might not survive without him. Washington, his health fading and his disillusionment with politics growing, held firm this time. He was going back to Virginia. As with his retirement from military life, his voluntary relinquishment of power as head of state was an almost inconceivable act at the time.

In his farewell to the American people, the retiring president acknowledged that he had likely made errors in office, but hoped that his faults would “be consigned to oblivion, as myself must soon be to the mansions of rest.” In March 1797, the man who had sacrificed so much for his country that he had to borrow money to get to his first inauguration left Philadelphia as a private citizen. Less than three years later, he was dead.

IV

WASHINGTON BETRAYED

In a 2020 book about the first president, the historian Peter Henriques wrote that Washington “proved that his truest allegiance was to the republic by voluntarily surrendering power. It was the first of many peaceful transfers of power in the unprecedented American experiment.” Less than a year after the book’s publication, however, Trump would subvert this centuries-long tradition by summoning a mob against the elected representatives of the United States, after refusing to accept the result of the vote.

Trump stood by as insurrectionists swarmed the House offices and even the Senate chamber itself on January 6, in an attempt to stop the certification of the election by Congress. Hours later, after one of the worst single days of casualties for law-enforcement officers since 9/11, Trump finally asked his supporters to go home. “I know your pain,” he said, his words only emphasizing the delusional beliefs of the rioters. “I know you’re hurt. We had an election that was stolen from us.” He has since referred to the people convicted in American courts for their actions on January 6 as “patriots” and to those held in prison as “hostages.” He has promised to pardon them.

[From the January/February 2022 issue: Trump’s next coup has already begun]

Washington’s character and record ensured that almost any of his successors would seem smaller by comparison. But the difference between Washington and Trump is so immense as to be unmeasurable. No president in history, not even the worst moral weaklings among them, is further from Washington than Trump.

Washington prized patience and had, as Adams put it, “the gift of silence”; Trump is ruled by his impulses and afflicted with verbal incontinence. Washington was uncomplaining; Trump whines incessantly. Washington was financially and morally incorruptible; Trump is a grifter and a crude libertine who still owes money to a woman he was found liable for sexually assaulting. Washington was a general of preternatural bravery who grieved the sacrifices of his men; Trump thinks that fallen soldiers are “losers” and “suckers.”

Washington personally took up arms to stop a rebellion against the United States; Trump encouraged one.

Some Americans seem unable to accept how much peril they face should Trump return, perhaps because many of them have never lived in an autocracy. They may yet get their chance: The former president is campaigning on an authoritarian platform. He has claimed that “massive” electoral fraud—defined as the vote in any election he loses—“allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.” He refers to other American citizens as “vermin” and “human scum,” and to journalists as “enemies of the people.” He has described freedom of the press as “frankly disgusting.” He routinely attacks the American legal system, especially when it tries to hold him accountable for his actions. He has said that he will govern as a dictator—but only for a day.

Trump is the man the Founders feared might arise from a mire of populism and ignorance, a selfish demagogue who would stop at nothing to gain and keep power. Washington foresaw the threat to American democracy from someone like Trump: In his farewell address, he worried that “sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction” would manipulate the public’s emotions and their partisan loyalties “to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.”

Many Americans in 2016 ignored this warning, and Trump engaged in the greatest betrayal of Washington’s legacy in American history. If given the opportunity, he would betray that legacy again—and the damage to the republic may this time be irreparable.

This article appears in the November 2024 print edition with the headline “Washington’s Nightmare.” When you buy a book using a link on this page, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.

What I Learned Serving On a January 6 Jury

The Atlantic

www.theatlantic.com › podcasts › archive › 2024 › 10 › i-bet-its-a-january-6-case › 680198

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About 1,500 people have been charged for their actions on January 6. Some brought weapons to the Capitol. Some committed acts of violence that were caught on camera. Some belonged to militias. And then there is a different category of defendant: someone with no criminal record who showed up on that day and went overboard and committed a crime.

The families of January 6 defendants have long argued that the punishments their loved ones received were too severe. (The Supreme Court took up one of their arguments and agreed.) In this episode, we contemplate that enduring complaint in an uncomfortably personal way. Soon after we discovered that our new neighbor was Micki Witthoeft, the mother of Ashli Babbitt, Lauren served as a juror on a January 6 case and emerged queasy about the outcome. We visit the defendant’s wife and talk to the judge in the case.

This is the fourth episode of We Live Here Now, a six-part series about what happened when we found out that our new neighbors were supporting January 6 insurrectionists.

The following is a transcript of the episode:

Hanna Rosin: What do you mean you feel bad for him?

Lauren Ober: Oh, I feel so bad. I feel so bad because he believed so many lies to get him to this point. Like, he was suckered in. So he’s going to go to jail for believing Donald Trump and for believing all of the rhetoric. And all of those people who spewed that—all the official people who spewed that—there’s nobody official who’s losing.

Rosin: Now that hundreds of people have been through the courts for crimes related to January 6, we know a lot more details about who they were. Some were Oath Keepers who showed up prepared for battle. Some carried guns or knives and beat up cops with flagpoles.

But there was also another group of just guys—young, curious normies. Or dads who maybe got a little too deep in the MAGA universe and then got a little too wild in the moment—criminal for the day.

We know about them, too, because a lot of them had their own YouTube channels or podcasts or whatever. Like this guy, who made this podcast recording with his friend on January 8, right after he flew home. He’s the guy Lauren feels bad for, the guy at the center of this episode. His name is Taylor Johnatakis.

Taylor Johnatakis: So this is the girl who was murdered. This is Ashli.

Ashli Babbitt: —walking to the Capitol in a mob. There’s an estimated 3 million people—

Johnatakis: We’re walking. I was here in this—I was here in this crowd.

Babbitt: Despite what the media tells you, boots on ground definitely say something different. There is a sea of nothing but red, white, and blue.

Rosin: The podcast host then shows his friend the video that Ashli Babbitt recorded on her phone and posted on Facebook of her walking towards the Capitol with a Trump flag wrapped around her waist.

Johnatakis: That was Ashli. That’s Ashli who got killed.

Guest: Wow. I had no—I had never seen the face to the name.

Johnatakis: Okay. That’s—what?!

Guest: I’m serious.

Johnatakis: You don’t know her?

Guest: No. I’m serious. There’s so much that you just can’t see from the outside.

Johnatakis: Oh my gosh.

Guest: It may have been played on the news, but I have not seen it. There’s a lot of stuff I haven’t seen.

Johnatakis: (Gasps.) I can’t believe it.

Guest: Do we need to take a break?

Johnatakis: I can’t believe you don’t know her name. Dude. She died for us, man. (Voice breaks.)

Guest: Yeah. I don’t—that’s the first time I’ve seen her.

Johnatakis: I didn’t realize you didn’t know her name. (Cries.) I’m sorry.

Rosin: The podcast host, the guy who is losing it, is not a right-wing media star or an influencer. He’d be lucky if a hundred people listened to his podcast. But someone important did listen: the FBI.

So now we are going to take a detour into the more surreal parts of the January 6 aftermath, where a goofy dad of five who had never been accused of a crime in his life gets caught up in an FBI roundup. And we’re doing that because D.C. citizen Lauren Ober was one of the people who had to decide his fate.

[Music]

Ober: I’m D.C. citizen Lauren Ober.

Rosin: And I’m Hanna Rosin. And from The Atlantic, this is We Live Here Now.

​Ober: A couple months before I met Micki, I got a notice in the mail. It was a summons for jury duty for the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia, Criminal Division. And because I am number-one best citizen, I didn’t throw the summons in the garbage. I opened it.

Rosin: On the day she was supposed to show up, which happened to be right after we learned who our neighbors were, Lauren said something offhand to me.

Ober: “I bet it’s a January 6 case.”

Rosin: We both laughed at this idea. Like, how wild would it be—just weeks after learning that some of your neighbors were very prominent Justice for J6ers—to get onto a January 6 jury? It would just be too weird.

Ober: Now, of course you know where this is going. I walked into Courtroom 15 and sat down with other potential jurors, and then the judge told us the trial we were being considered for was a January 6 case, which maybe shouldn’t have been surprising.

[Music]

Ober: January 6 is the largest criminal investigation in U.S. history. And most of these cases have been adjudicated in D.C. So I guess I had a pretty high chance of ending up on a January 6 jury. Fun fact: You can see a lovely tableau of the U.S. Capitol from the building. I mean, how many courthouses have a view of the crime scene?

The defendant, Taylor Johnatakis, was charged with three felonies: obstruction of an official proceeding; civil disorder’ and assaulting, resisting, or impeding certain officers—also, a handful of misdemeanors. In my jury notebook, I wrote: “Looks like a regular guy. Short brown hair, a brown beard, and rectangular glasses.” One thing that stood out was how much Johnatakis smiled and made eye contact with the jury. It seemed like he was—I don’t know—happy to be there or something. It was creepy.

Johnatakis: Trump speech is over. It was awesome.

Ober: The prosecutor told us in her opening statement that we’d be seeing a lot of video evidence from January 6 because a lot of these guys made videos and recordings of themselves, like the video podcast that you heard earlier, where the host cries about Ashli. That was Johnatakis. He made and posted a lot of videos the prosecution played us at trial, like this:

Johnatakis: We’re walking over to the Capitol right now, and—I don’t know—maybe we’ll break down the doors.

Ober: And this—

Johnatakis: I was on the front line. I was on the gate. I organized a push up to the Capitol because I felt like that is exactly what we needed.

Ober: And also this—

Johnatakis: We had a right to be there. We were supposed to be there. I was there, okay?

Ober: As the case continued, over about three days, there was more and more video evidence. Even in the horde of people swarming the Capitol, Johnatakis was easy to pick out. He was wearing a red MAGA hat and had a megaphone strapped to his back, so the jury could follow his movements as he made his way closer and closer to the doors of the Capitol.

As Johnatakis climbed the many sets of stairs that led to the various entrances of the Capitol, he shouted into his megaphone to no one in particular for, like, a solid 10 minutes about oligarchs and censorship and how Mike Pence apparently abused children.

Johnatakis: I never, never, never considered the fact that our vice president is a child molester!

I never considered the fact that our vice president is in business with the Chinese Communist Party.

Ober: When Johnatakis reached the top of the stairs, he was blocked from going any further by a bunch of metal barricades and lines of cops. This is the moment where the prosecution offered evidence that the defendant was not just one of the guys milling around but actually a riot leader, because he was yelling into his megaphone, directing people what to do.

Johnatakis: Don’t throw any shit up here. Don’t throw any shit up here. They don’t need that. They don’t need that. And I don’t need to push it back when we come to that. Push it out of here. We’re just using our bodies—

Ober: Although no one seemed to be listening to a word he was saying, until he said this.

Johnatakis: One, two, three—go! One foot!

[Cheers and clanging]

Ober: This is where the action started. Johnatakis motions to the people around him to put their hands on the barricade. When they do, he shouts, One, two, three, and starts pushing the barricade into the cops. The cops on the barricade push back, while another line of cops behind them shoots pepper spray at the rioters and tries to hit them with nightsticks. The defendant retreats, and the cops restore their line. The whole thing lasts about a minute.

When the jury catches up with Johnatakis again, it’s in a video he made as he’s walking away from the Capitol.

Johnatakis: They’re that afraid of us. They’re that afraid of us. They had to usher the congressmen and senators out of the House in shame with black bags. I got gassed. I got hit pretty dang hard a couple times with a nightstick. It’s not funny. It hurt. We’re done. I’m walking away from the Capitol. I’ve shed some tears. I’m very sad about what I have watched firsthand unfold.

Ober: Now, the prosecution was selling a pretty good story here. In tape after tape, Johnatakis declares, It’s me. I’m here. I’m ready to go. He sounds pretty unhinged, and he uses his megaphone to get a bunch of people to go after the cops.

Then it was the defense’s turn, which in this case meant the defendant himself. Despite the judge’s warning against it, Johnatakis decided to represent himself, and the result was bizarre.

After the witnesses testified, Johnatakis apologized to them and asked them questions like, Is there anything I can do to make amends for my actions on that day? At some point, he told the jury, I’m sorry for my sins, and I repent. He did argue that a lot of what he’d said was, quote, “hyperbolic rhetoric”—that he had a podcast, and he sometimes used overblown language. That was, at least, a relevant argument. But the videos had shown Johnatakis doing more than just talking.

Then both sides made their closing statements. One sounded like a professional court argument, and the other lectured the judge about a legal term and then recited scripture. Then the judge sent us, the members of the jury, off to deliberate.

While we deliberated, this is the thing I kept coming back to: Compared to other J6ers I’d read about, this guy wasn’t a member of a militia. He didn’t carry a weapon or beat up a cop. On the other hand, it was pretty clear that Johnatakis had done what he was accused of. We weren’t judging his actions in comparison to others; we were judging based on what we saw on video and witness testimony.

Everyone on the jury took it seriously, and the verdict was unanimous: guilty. The clerk read the verdict out loud, and I kept my head down so I wouldn’t accidentally make eye contact with the defendant.

A couple of days after the trial, Hanna and I left for a Thanksgiving vacation. I should have been having fun, but I couldn’t stop thinking about Taylor Johnatakis. While we were enjoying our trip, he was sitting in a cell at the D.C. jail, where he would spend the next five months before learning his fate.

It didn’t feel like some miscarriage of justice, but I didn’t feel great about it. Almost a year later, I still don’t.

Rosin: We explore why that is, after the break.

[Break]

Rosin: In the days after Lauren’s jury duty, I noticed she had an uncharacteristic heaviness about her, so we sat down and talked about it.

Rosin: So did anybody else feel sorry for him?

Ober: I mean, I would say that, like, half the people in the room felt bad for him.

Rosin: Why? The feeling bad is—I mean, I almost get it. I don’t a hundred percent get it, because it sounds like, you know, the thing you described him doing at the top of the steps with those barriers is edging on a kind of violence. There are victims, who are those cops—

Ober: It’s not edging on a kind of violence. It actually is an act of physical violence, technically, according to the law. That is what we were asked to determine, and the government proved that.

Rosin: And there were people there—police officers, you know, they’re people. Some of them were traumatized. So the violence didn’t just happen against property. You guys fulfilled your duty. He is guilty. And yet something feels not right to you about the outcome.

Ober: Because he seems like a guy who was lost. His whole argument was hyperbolic rhetoric. And he was suggesting that he got caught up in the spirit of, like—for the Trump people, they felt like they were part of something: They’re a part of a thing that is so much bigger than themselves. They are a part of a movement. They’re a part of history. They matter, right? They matter. And—

Rosin: But all crimes and genocides are caused by people who have a hole in their life, and then they want to be part of a thing, and so they get swept up in a thing and then—

Ober: No. That’s not true. That’s not true at all, because most crimes—most violent crimes—are crimes of passion or crimes of opportunity.

Rosin: All mass crimes—all mass, cultural crimes are generally someone in power preying on people who want to matter and belong.

Ober: Yes, and I feel bad about that. That is sad to me. That is sad that all of these people who—they did that to themselves. I understand that. I was on a jury, and I found him guilty. I didn’t say he didn’t do this.

But this guy is just getting used. He has a nice family, beautiful children. He has a nice wife. He goes to, you know, his church. Like, he has a nice, respectable job. He made his own business. Like, that’s a fine life. That’s a fine life, but in some way, he was led to believe that’s not good enough. You have to fight for this thing. You have to save America because America’s going down the tubes, even though he had probably a really nice life. I don’t know what his life was like, but from all that I can tell, it was, like, nice people.

Rosin: Okay, a last thing: Is there anything else that you feel you really want to know? Anything you still have a kind of burning flame of curiosity about?

Ober: Yeah. I mean, I would love to understand: What is your family gonna do now? And, you know, Now you’re forever, like, a January 6er. And you’re branded with that now. Maybe that’s a proud brand to have. I don’t know. I am really curious about where you go from here.

[Music]

Rosin: Lauren, of course, is not trying to say that he shouldn’t be punished at all. She voted to convict, after all. So what is her queasy feeling? Is it a “zoom in, zoom out” thing, like a lot of us would feel bad for a defendant if we were on their jury and got to know them better? Or are the January 6 prosecutions just a really unusual set of circumstances that we don’t have a box for yet?

What I took away was: There is something about the ratio of crime to punishment that wasn’t sitting well with Lauren. Of course, we now know she wasn’t the only one. The Supreme Court justices ruled seven months later that some of the January 6 defendants had been improperly charged with a felony of “obstructing an official proceeding.” Both Johnatakis and Nicole Reffitt’s husband, Guy, were charged with that felony. The government is reviewing their cases, along with the cases of the hundreds of defendants who were impacted by the ruling.

At the vigil, by the way, Micki and company celebrated that Supreme Court ruling with champagne and cake.

The defendant in Lauren’s case, Taylor Johnatakis, went straight to the D.C. jail. And then five months later, he appeared at his sentencing hearing. It seemed weird for Lauren Ober, Juror No. 3, to go, so I went instead.

The defendant’s wife, Marie, sat in the row in front of me, surrounded by three of her five children. She looked tiny. People can get dwarfed by official proceedings. Plus, it had been raining hard that morning, so everyone seemed extra wilted. Micki sat a few rows behind, barely taking her eyes off Marie and the kids.

After the prosecution and the defense made their cases, it was the judge’s turn to announce the sentence. But before doing that, he made an unusually long speech. His name is Judge Royce Lamberth. He’s a Reagan appointee who’s handled dozens of J6 cases. He described this defendant as always courteous and respectful. He said the defendant was not, quote, an “"inherently bad person.”

He mentioned that he’d gotten 20 letters from family members about Johnatakis’s good character and that he’d read all of them. Some sample compliments from those letters, quote: “He is faithful to his wife and children. He’s faithful to God. He loves his brothers and sisters. We love him more than words can express.” And: “Never had a legal issue, outside a speeding ticket.”

The judge said he’d even called one of the family members who’d written an especially good letter, which is wild. Can you imagine getting a phone call from a judge in D.C., out of the blue, who says, Hey, I’m about to send your relative to prison. I just wanted to talk to you about it? It was like this judge had a bit of that same queasy feeling that Lauren had had, because he went to such great lengths to explain his reasoning.

And then the sentence. Counts one and two: 60 months. The defendant’s wife put her arm over her youngest son’s shoulder. Count three: 12 months. The son, who was just old enough to do math, started to cry. Plus 15 more months. Now Marie started to cry. 87 months total—more than seven years. That little son of theirs might be taller than his dad the next time they were home together.

Okay, remember Lauren’s questions to me?

Ober: What is your family gonna do now? And, you know, Now you’re forever, like, a January 6er. And you’re branded with that now. Maybe that’s a proud brand to have. I don’t know.

Rosin: Seeing Marie and her family in court made me want to know too.

[Music]

Rosin: Hi. Should I take my shoes off?

Marie Johnatakis: Come in.

Rosin: A couple of months after the sentencing, I visited Marie Johnatakis, the defendant’s wife—the one who’d cried in the courtroom—at their family home in Washington State. When I was planning the trip, my editor reminded me of the usual travel-danger precautions: Be careful. Make sure someone always knows where you are, which, when I got there, was pretty funny.

The vibe in this house was so powerfully “mom’s in charge.” Like, the thing of note was how all the toys and kid things were so neatly put away and organized in baskets.

Rosin: Why is it so neat? You have five children.

Marie Johnatakis: Yes. So these are our things, but there’s a lot—

Rosin: This house, an oversized actual log cabin set back on a woodsy road, where they had raised and homeschooled those five children, felt so far away from January 6 and jail and D.C. courtrooms that it made me want to know what her reality was on the day that her husband was standing in front of the Capitol with that bullhorn.

Rosin: Did you guys watch it on TV? Like, did the kids know what was going on?

Marie Johnatakis: We did not watch it on TV. We were doing other stuff. I’m trying to even remember the weather for that day, but probably would have been kids playing Legos, big kids probably hanging out with other big kids.

Rosin: And what are you doing?

Marie Johnatakis: I’m just taking care of all the kids, cooking dinner, cooking lunch. (Laughs.)

Rosin: The feminist thought did occur to me at this moment that one way to see some of these J6 cases is that the men were out enacting their 1776 fantasy while the women were home putting away the Legos. And there was plenty of evidence of that in this case. Remember how Lauren and I went away for Thanksgiving right after the trial?

Well, that meant that Taylor, the husband and father, was in D.C. at his trial just before Thanksgiving. And his wife, Marie, was home with their five kids, planning the holiday dinner, which she just assumed her husband would be home for—because she somehow thought that even if he did get convicted, he would be able to wait for his sentencing at home.

Marie Johnatakis: It was really surprising that they took him into custody then. And I just remember thinking, like, He’s not a danger. He’s been out this whole time. Can you please just let us? You know, we just need a little more help. (Cries.)

But anyways, so when he didn’t fly back home, it was one of those things that it’s like, Okay. It’s me.

Rosin: And then to cap it off, on the morning of Christmas Eve, the family walked downstairs to discover that their dog had died. He’d stopped eating when dad left.

Rosin: Oh, come on. I mean, My dog died on Christmas Eve is, like—

Marie Johnatakis: It’s the worst country song you’ve ever heard. The worst one. (Laughs.) My husband’s in jail, and my dog is dead.

Rosin: And it’s Christmas Eve—

Marie Johnatakis: And it’s Christmas Eve.

Rosin: Yeah.

Marie Johnatakis: Oh. (Sighs.) So yeah—it is pretty pitiful. (Laughs.)

Rosin: Yeah. That’s almost so bad that you have to laugh.

Marie Johnatakis: You have to laugh. You have to laugh.

Rosin: Yeah. Exactly.

Rosin: So here she was: no husband, no dog, no steady paycheck, and not enough savings, which likely meant they would have to sell this beautiful house. That’s why the toys were extra neatly arranged when we came over—they were staging the house for potential buyers.

Taylor didn’t explicitly choose his ideals over his family, but that was kind of the end result. Like, he could have plead guilty, which would have probably cut his sentence in half. Or he could have gotten a lawyer, instead of representing himself. But he took none of those roads, and now she had seven years of: Okay. It’s just me.

Rosin: Was there a moment where you were ever mad at him?

Marie Johnatakis: I don’t think so. I think that, you know, I’ve known Taylor for a really long time, because we’ve been married 19 years. And he has a really, really good heart. And he’s motivated by things that I think are noble.

And so I know this is going to be kind of hard to understand, but if you can imagine, like, a place where, let’s say, you were really convinced that, you know, the election was—like, there were problems with it, and maybe it was enough to stand up for it. And I don’t know if this is skewed as far as, like, my idea on this, but there’s a lot of times that people stood up for things, and it cost them dearly. And while it almost sounds bombastic to think that this could be something like that—like, he said enough times, I wish I hadn’t have gone.

But some of me thinks, like—I mean, who does stand up for it? Who does say, Hey. There’s a problem here? And at some point, there are casualties. I don’t know, all the woulda, shoulda, couldas. I’m like, I wish they would have—because he had a bullhorn, I’m like, Tell the guy in the bullhorn to shut up. (Laughs.) He would have listened.

[Music]

Rosin: And this was the beautiful, terrible exchange that brought me to human empathy and then deposited me at a dead end—because the couple had doubled down on their doubts about the election watching Dinesh D’Souza’s movie 2000 Mules, a garbage film full of conspiracies and lies. And that had prompted them to think everything involving the government was rigged, including his trial, which is why he went about it in the weird, self-defeating way he did.

And yet she had explained her position to me with such gentleness and humility—with humor, for God’s sake—even leaving room for my doubts, that I had nowhere left to go. I totally understood her position. And also, I totally didn’t.

I did have one more thing to say, though.

Rosin: Okay. Here is my moment to tell you a difficult thing.

Marie Johnatakis: Okay.

Rosin: Okay. The reason I know about Taylor’s case is because my partner, also my partner on this project, was on the jury.

Marie Johnatakis: Okay.

Rosin: Questions?

Marie Johnatakis: Question? I don’t think so. No. I don’t think so.

Rosin: You sure?

Marie Johnatakis: Yeah. What questions should I ask, Hanna?

Rosin: I wouldn’t want to—I don’t know. I wouldn’t want to meet someone who was close, even if it’s a step removed, to someone who helped put my husband in the position or who participated in that in every way. I think that could be a hard thing to hear.

Marie Johnatakis: Yeah. No. You know, we went to the sentencing, and I watched the judge up there, you know, playing his role and the prosecution doing their role. And it just—I don’t know. I just felt a lot of compassion towards them all, because everybody is playing the part that they have been asked to play, including your partner. And I think that we all just do our best.

Rosin: Before I left, she told me if I had any guilt about it, I should let it go. A couple of weeks after our visit, she wrote about our conversation on her blog: “I remember praying during the trial that someone on the jury would not convict…just one person. I prayed so hard for that. She,” and she means Lauren here, “could have been that one. And yet—I still can’t find it in my heart to be angry—it’s just not there.”

[Music]

Rosin: The J6 judges have found themselves in a tough spot. Lamberth, the judge in Johnatakis’s case, is a Republican appointee, remember. Still, he and his colleagues have taken heat from Republicans.

Since the J6 cases have been going through the courts, New York Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, the House Republican Conference chair, and Republican Congressman Jim Jordan from Ohio have repeatedly filed complaints against the D.C. circuit for “corruption” and “bias.”

[Music]

Rosin: And then, just before Johnatakis’s sentencing hearing, Stefanik took it a little further. She, too, started referring to the January 6 prisoners, many of whom had been sentenced by Lamberth and his colleagues, as “hostages.” Here’s what she said.

Elise Stefanik: I have concerns about the treatment of January 6 hostages. I have concerns. We have a role in Congress of oversight over our treatments of prisoners. And I believe that we’re seeing the weaponization of the federal government against not just President Trump. But we’re seeing it against conservatives. We’re seeing it against Catholics.”

Rosin: I have no proof of this, but maybe that’s what Lamberth had in mind when he was writing that letter he read at the sentencing hearing that he sent to Johnatakis’s family.

He wrote, “Political violence rots republics. Therefore, January 6 must not become a precedent for further violence against political opponents or governmental institutions. This is not normal.”

Ober: In our next episode: what happened inside the D.C. jail’s “Patriot Pod.” And our tour guide: a young troll or maybe a true radical.

Brandon Fellows: He said, Hey. I’m the guy that they accused of killing Officer Sicknick. I’m like, No way!

Ober: We Live Here Now is a production of The Atlantic. The show was reported, written, and executive produced by me, Lauren Ober, and Hanna Rosin. Our managing producer is Rider Alsop. Our senior producer is Ethan Brooks. Original scoring, sound design, and mix engineering by Brendan Baker.

This series was edited by Scott Stossel and Claudine Ebeid. Fact-checking by Michelle Ciarrocca. Art direction by Colin Hunter. Project management by Nancy DeVille.

The Atlantic’s executive editor is Adrienne LaFrance. Jeffrey Goldberg is The Atlantic’s editor in chief.