The Senate’s findings on the last days of Trump’s presidency are

Last week, the Senate’s judiciary committee released its staff report on Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election and bend the justice department to his will. Subverting Justice: How the Former President and his Allies Pressured DOJ to Overturn the 2020 Election lays out in grim detail the ex-reality show host’s concerted effort to weaponize the government’s legal machinery in his desperate bid to cling to power.

One conclusion reads: “President Trump repeatedly asked DOJ leadership to endorse his false claims that the election was stolen and to assist his efforts to overturn the election results.” Another informs us that “Trump allies with links to the ‘Stop the Steal’ movement and the January 6 insurrection participated in the pressure campaign against DOJ.”

As if we didn’t already know. Don’t expect the report to change hearts or minds.

On a Saturday night visit to Iowa, Trump told the crowd that he had not conceded defeat. Indeed, one day later, Steve Scalise, the No 2 Republican in the House of Representatives, refused to say that the election wasn’t stolen. Trump has the Republicans in a hammerlock. The impact of Senate report is likely to be negligible.

Since Trump’s backers pillaged Congress back in January, the Republican party has selectively forgiven and forgotten. By the numbers, 57% of Republicans now believe “too much attention” has been paid to the 6 January riot. Only roughly a third of Republicans concede that storming the Capitol was about overturning the election. Too many Republicans still blame it on antifa.

The new normal is neither particularly normal nor new. As America’s cold civil war continues, hyper-partisanship is the rule, not the exception. And among Republicans, fealty to Trump is the acid test.

Look at Mike Pence, Trump’s hapless vice-president and an aspiring 2024 presidential nominee. Even after having been kicked to the curb by his former boss and targeted for hanging by Capitol rioters, Pence continues to play political lapdog.

He is all too aware that Trump remains the Republican party’s boss and that his future rests in Trump’s hands. “I know the media wants to distract from the Biden administration’s failed agenda by focusing on one day in January,” Pence told Fox News.

“One day in January” – really?

Apparently, signs that screamed “Hang Mike Pence” were an illusion, as were the gallows near the capitol. Then again, Pence’s brother Greg, a congressman from Indiana, voted against certifying the election despite his having seen first-hand what his sibling had endured.

Although the report will not change the political landscape, it is likely to have real consequences for Jeffrey Clark, a former assistant attorney general and the most senior justice department official to plot with Trump. The report recommends that the DC bar’s disciplinary…