An Anniversary Without Accountability
By
Leonard Zwelling
Earlier this week, this piece by The New York Times editorial board, appeared on the newspaper’s web site. It was also in Sunday’s paper on January 4, as the five-year anniversary of the January 6, 2021 Capitol Hill riot vs. peaceful demonstration, depending on your point of view, neared. It’s here now.
The article goes into great detail of what precisely occurred that day from the pre-meditated actions of the mob to Mr. Trump’s egging them on to members of Congress running for cover as hooligans broke into the House chamber. I am not going to repeat all of that especially because there are many on the right who don’t believe that anything bad happened that day, or, if it did, it was justified because Biden stole the 2020 election. Of course, that is all nonsense. How do I know?
First, I saw with my own two eyes people marching through the halls of the place I used to work threatening the lives of the members of Congress and their staffs. That would have been me had it occurred in 2009 instead of 2021. I might have been hiding under my desk in the Hart Senate Office Building. And as far as who won the election, that has been adjudicated over fifty times in many courts. No one stole anything. Believe what you want. You will anyway.
Second, a thorough exam of all of the evidence gleaned from that day by the House Select Committee made it abundantly clear that this was civil disobedience on a massive and destructive scale, if not a down right insurrection. Members of law enforcement were seriously injured. Some died. The plaque to commemorate their valor has yet to be placed in the Capitol despite a law passed by Congress to do so.
Third, that Republicans who had to hide from these very demonstrators are now defending the actions of these hoodlums who wanted to hang Mike Pence because Trump said to do so, is outrageous. Talk about two-faced! These politicians are the worst kind of public servants. They are anything but servants. They are liars who will trade in deceit to suit their political goals.
Finally, many of the Capitol Hill law breakers were tried in court and found guilty. Hundreds. That so many had to be pardoned by Trump indicates that these people did something wrong, but will escape accountability, let alone punishment.
However, the ultimate example of escaping accountability is Trump himself. Because President Biden wouldn’t step aside after clearly being sufficiently unwell to perform his duties, and the members of his party and of his Cabinet would not invoke the 25th Amendment in 2022 so that there could be a viable primary on the Democratic side in 2024, Mr. Biden got to go home to Delaware and Mr. Trump, despite being impeached twice and almost being convicted, and while not being barred from federal service by Congress as should have occurred, was elected again in 2024.
Now we have an economy for the wealthy, health care insurance premiums rising, and a new responsibility—the governing of Venezuela. Who’s going to pay for all of this? This mess is because no one really held Mr. Trump accountable for anything—particularly Congress. And, by the way, no one held Mr. Biden accountable for being a fool and a selfish, damaged one at that.
This brought me back to a pivotal moment in my MD Anderson vice-presidential career.
My office had labored for many months to develop a system by which the individual clinical investigators and their departments could be brought into compliance with the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) when it came to matters of human subjects research—clinical studies with patients. This followed a serious incident of two deaths on a clinical protocol not being reported to the Institutional Review Board by the MD Anderson principal investigator using an as-yet to be FDA-approved drug and it all being discovered by the FDA before anyone in my office had a clue. I was all of six months in the job at that time. I was a raw rookie and being summoned to Washington to face the FDA. Scary stuff.
Without going into details, the FDA yelled at us, but did not close MD Anderson. It demanded we put various guard rails in place which we attempted to do. Despite this, specific departments refused our help in implementing processes to comply with the CFR using these guard rails and, in fact, investigators from these departments belittled those in my office trying to instruct them in how to avoid federal government action. Remember, the FDA was watching MD Anderson.
At one point, my office compliance staff had had enough abuse and reported all of the lack of compliance by these investigators to the Institutional Review Board that oversees clinical research at MD Anderson and reports to no one at Anderson, including me when I was VP, but rather to the federal government.
Some of these non-compliant investigators were no longer allowed to do clinical research, barred for six months by the IRB. The Faculty Senate came down on my head thinking I controlled the IRB. I did not, but thought the IRB’s actions holding these investigators to account were justified. I refused to budge despite a running disagreement on this matter with the then president of Anderson. I could not reverse the IRB anyway and, as I said, I thought the IRB was correct. I knew what the CFR said and what these investigators had done in flouting it. They were going to be held accountable by the IRB as was our institutional responsibility. All of this is fictionalized in my novel Conflict of Interest: Money Drives Medicine and People Die, available on Amazon or through this web site.
To be honest, I never recovered from this breach with the faculty. Eventually there was a Blue Ribbon Panel formed by that president that found my office too powerful and eventually I was no longer in charge of the clinical research infrastructure. But that did not make me wrong. Stubborn, perhaps, but not wrong.
I believed in accountability then, and I believe in it now because without it, society and its institutions devolve into chaos.
Donald Trump may have us devolving into chaos now as he undermines congressional oversight, ignores the federal judiciary, and invades countries in this hemisphere without informing Congress.
Our Constitution makes sure that all aspects of the federal government are accountable to all other aspects and to the people. This document is being trampled upon by the current President of the United States. Since he can never run for office again (we hope), he will never be held accountable for January 6 or anything he has done since being re-elected. And that is a terrible lesson for the children of America to have to learn in History class. But, they will hopefully learn the truth there even as the conspiratorial right believes that January 6 was a big nothing. It was big, for sure. I like to think history will remember it for what it was—an attempt at a government coup.
For those of you who also think January 6 has been overblown, read the article. I know you won’t. After all, no one will hold you accountable for not admitting to the truth.
