Democrats and Republicans alike blamed Trump for inciting the attack, and he only escaped conviction at his Senate impeachment trial — which would have barred him from the presidency forever — because Republican senators insisted it was too late to convict a president who had already left office.
Besides, then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) argued at the time, Trump would face another kind of reckoning.
“We have a criminal justice system in this country. We have civil litigation. And former presidents are not immune from being held accountable by either one,” McConnell said.
That never happened, and many Democrats are ready to place the blame on one man: Attorney General Merrick Garland. They argue he waited too long to appoint a special prosecutor, which allowed Trump and his legal team to stall the case long enough for Trump to win the presidency a second time. Garland made the appointment in November 2022, saying he’d done so partly because Trump had just formalized his bid for the presidency.