The verdict was as clear as it could be. This past November, the American electorate emphatically rejected Joe Biden’s failed domestic and international policies. Moreover, the voters’ dissatisfaction with his administration’s performance was amplified by steadily eroding trust in their elected leadership.

I’d argue that the ultimate tipping point in voter tolerance is the moment when we can no longer believe what our leaders are telling us.

Examples abound. How many times did we hear that “the border is secure” despite videos of illegal migrants crossing it in waves? Or assurances that inflation is just “transitory”? Or that our president’s mental faculties are just fine — he’s “sharp as a tack, running circles around all of us!” We expressed concern about spy balloons hovering over U.S. defense sites and were told, “It’s nothing; stop worrying.”

For four years, our elected leaders and their spokespersons routinely insisted that we not believe what we saw with our own eyes. Then, on November 5, the voters said “no more,” and now it’s time to set the record straight.

There is no better or more timely case in point than the supposed Donald Trump-inspired “insurrection” four years ago this week, on 1/6/21 — or “J6,” as it’s popularly called. Yes, the ugly and violent incursion into the U.S. Capitol by an unruly mob that day is something we’d all prefer to forget. And yes, it would be nice to believe that the reelection of Mr. Trump has put it behind us once and for all.

Unfortunately, it’s not that easy. The J6 matter is far from closed. Many Americans still believe Biden’s repeated assertion that J6 was “the greatest attack on American democracy since the Civil War” and the day “we almost lost it all.” For an event deemed so crucial to our nation’s past and future, we remain locked in political debate, still unable to separate fact from political spin.

But we saw it unfold that day, on live TV, in real time. And once again, we’re told not to believe our lying eyes. We know what insurrections look like — they topple governments, leaving swaths of death, destruction, and chaos.

Our J6 riot was nothing of the sort. It was briefly angry and disruptive — and then it was over. Only one shot was fired — that by a Capitol police lieutenant, tragically killing an unarmed female trespasser. The J6 riot should never have happened, but its net impact on our democratic process was nil; the planned election certification proceeded later that day. Calling it an insurrection is absurd.

The backstory seems obvious. Evidently, political operatives could not resist the temptation to capitalize on the insurrection notion (invented by a few TV broadcasters that day) to build the case that their political opponents — and particularly their nemesis, Donald Trump — pose an extraordinary threat to our nation. They decided, early on, to launch an all-out, whole-of-government campaign to sell that story to the American public.

Theirs was an epic, world-class snow job. Consider the lengths they went to sell their insurrection story:

• Optics — fencing the entire Capitol complex and posting thousands of armed National Guard troops for months to ward off the next deadly assault from MAGA extremists.

• Symbolic grieving over the body of a police officer lying in state in the U.S. Capitol who’d supposedly been killed by marauding J6 rioters. (That was untrue — the officer had not been injured by the rioters; he died of natural causes the following day.)

• Gravitas, official sanction, in the form of a faux-bipartisan Select Committee of the U.S. Congress, clearly intent on cementing the insurrection narrative. The committee conducted closed hearings for nearly two years, releasing only cherry-picked snippets via prime-time TV presentations, scripted and choreographed with professional Hollywood help.

• A credible insurrection narrative requires villains. Our FBI obliged, combing the nation in the longest, most expensive dragnet in its history to identify, find, arrest, and prosecute J6 participants, however insignificant their role. They’ve delivered 1,600 arrests so far, with more on the way — ruining lives and reputations — even though not one has actually been charged with insurrection.

• There was also the unprecedented lawfare campaign intended to put Trump in jail rather than the White House. Happily, that part backfired spectacularly.

All in all, we’ve seen a massive effort to sell the insurrection narrative to the public — but one proving nothing and leaving gaping holes. How to set the record straight? The J6 open wound won’t go away once and for all until we, the public, know the whole story.

With a new day, a new Congress, and a new president, we can now reopen the J6 investigation — either by a new committee of Congress or by a special counsel — to complete and correct the one-sided work of the previous Congress.

In particular, the reopened investigation must answer key questions conveniently ignored by the last one:

• To what extent did the FBI influence, encourage, and support the riot? A recently released — and hardly satisfying — evaluation reported that there were 26 FBI “informants” involved. What, exactly, did they do?

• Was there any actual plan or plot to assassinate anyone? Who built the infamous gallows, supposedly to be used that day to hang Mike Pence and others?

• Who planted the pipe bombs found outside the DNC and RNC headquarters? And why?

These are among the most serious matters in the entire J6 episode. The answers may prove embarrassing to one side or the other; they may substantiate or debunk the preferred narratives (mine included). No matter — we need to know.

The reopened examination must also include a full review of every J6 participant’s arrest, prosecution, conviction, and sentencing and prepare case-by-case recommendations to the president for commutation or pardons where appropriate.

Of course, the results must be compiled in a comprehensive report available to the American public.

In my view, there’s no need to prosecute those who improperly inflated the J6 balloon — that was political hackery by political hacks. The objective should be simply to puncture the existing façade and replace it with a clear, complete, and demonstrably sound disposition of fact.

As the incoming president likes to remind us, the best retribution is success. And would not a closed J6 book and a massive boost to public trust be a sufficient reward?