Rarely has there been a set open to congressional hearings with so much anticipation, but so little certainty of success.
The first of at least half a dozen public hearings by the House committee investigating Jan. 6’s attack on Capitol will be held this week. It has already promised shocking revelations that would reveal just how close the U.S. was to losing its democracy.
It’s all about democratic resilience. “Can we strengthen our institutions and protect our people from insurrections, coups, and violence?” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), a member of the committee, said to NBC News. “I hope that we can spur the country into making the necessary reforms in order to strengthen democracy.”
Thursday is the day when all the suspense ends and the nine-member committee can tell the tale.
What will it look like to achieve success? This question weighs on congressional Democrats and committee members who invited the panel to provide both a definitive account of the riot as well as tangible solutions to stop another.
According to interviews with over 20 members of the committee, witnesses, lawmakers, aides, and strategists, what happens later will determine whether or not the committee’s work has been deemed successful or unsuccessful.
The panel believes that hearings cannot be a one-way street. The members are seeking accountability. Because the committee is not a law enforcement agency, it cannot prosecute anyone. But if the members tell a compelling story about Joe Biden’s attempt to deny him his rightful victory it could force the Justice Department into stepping up its investigation.
“I am very hopeful that [the committee]’s product will be a roadmap — not only for Congress but also for the Department of Justice, and for the American people who wish to preserve our democracy,” Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-Texas), who was trapped in the House gallery during the riot of Jan. 6, 2021 said in an interview.
To make the committee succeed, its members must incite enough anger that the voters demand concrete action to stop anyone from subverting peaceful power transfer. They will need to alarm a large national audience enough that politicians and prosecutors can take action.
This will not be an easy task. It’s possible that viewers will feel like they’ve heard it all before due to a series of leaks during the lead-up to the hearings. Many Americans have made progress in the past year, even though it was a difficult time for them to believe that Biden won despite a mob’s violent attempt to stop their victory. Quinnipiac polls in January revealed that 44% of Americans believed too much about the attack on Capitol. This is compared to 38% five months prior.
It is clear that the committee has the ability to influence opinion. The first hearing will be held in prime time and covered by major networks. Fox News, a conservative outlet didn’t reply to an inquiry regarding whether it would broadcast the hearing live. The panel will display video from Jan. 6, which the public has never seen, and publicize hours of testimony by people connected to Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the election.
Members of the Trump Forces will be able to demonstrate that they knew they lost in 2020, but still claimed that the election was stolen. They will detail how former President Donald Trump and his associates urged Mike Pence to stop the certification of Biden’s win, even though he was not authorized to do so at the time that the electoral votes were being tallied. They will likely reveal the details of Trump’s actions in the West Wing during the hours that a mob broke into the Capitol to stop him from being in power.
The committee hopes to have Marc Short and Greg Jacob as witnesses, who are senior advisers to President Trump. They were there with him when the rioters stormed Capitol looking for him to be hanged.
One Republican who advised members of the committee said that they feel there is only a short time for them to win public opinion and do this. The concern is that the Justice Department might not do anything with their findings even if they reported them. They are trying to find the best way to tell the story to the public.
The committee’s role in preserving a fragile democracy is equally important. The committee’s success would be to have the hearings to move legislation, which is currently languishing in Congress. This will stop candidates exploiting ambiguities within the Electoral Count Act (a 19th century law that governs how presidents are elected). The law has been in the works for some time, but a bipartisan group has not made much progress.
If the hearings convince Americans that the Electoral Count Act of 1887 must be rewritten so that the losing candidate doesn’t get sworn in as president it will increase the likelihood that a reform measure is passed.
“The country is as combustible now as it was before Jan. 6, maybe even more. “We have to certify again January 2025,” stated Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), one of the Democratic prosecutors in Trump’s second impeachment case. “What are their recommendations to ensure that we don’t get caught in another attack?”
Republicans have a much easier task. They just need busy Americans to turn off. The GOP will succeed in its mission if the hearings prove to be a failure. The GOP has been working hard to discredit the committee. It portrays it as a collection hard-edged partisans who are focused on gettingcha material that would help Democrats retain control of Congress in midterm elections. Republicans believe that the hearings could backfire, as Americans are focused on high gas prices.
According to a national Republican strategist, if Democrats talk about January 6, and gas prices, they will lose 40 House seats.
Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif. was subpoenaed by the committee. They are not conducting a legitimate probe. They seem to be merely trying to pursue their political enemies.”
The committee insists on its bipartisan composition in an effort to dispel any accusations it might be plotting a political vendetta. Two of the nine members of the committee are Republicans, Reps. Liz Cheney from Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger from Illinois. Both are however scorned for Trump’s MAGA movement.
Peter Navarro, a former senior Trump official, stated that the upcoming hearings would be a “show trial”. It’s straight out of Stalin or the cultural revolution. It’s just a trial. That’s it.
(Federal grand jury indicted Navarro Friday for not complying with a subpoena issued by the committee. He stated that the committee had exceeded its mandate in an interview just days before the indictment. He stated that the only thing these committees are supposed investigate is matters that would allow them to make better laws, regulations, and legislation.
Some Democrats are sceptical about the way that the committee has conducted its work. The problem is that Cheney and Kinzinger are both potential 2024 Republican presidential candidate candidates. This means they could face Trump during the primaries. The nine members of this committee could be accused of using the hearings to gain political advantage over their opponents. Cheney already stated that enough evidence has been gathered by the committee to charge Trump with criminal offenses.
It would be better to focus on the threat to democracy rather than Trump, suggested Doug Jones, a former Democratic senator from Alabama, who helped to shepherd Judge Ketanji brown Jackson’s Supreme Court nomination through Congress.
It’s not their job build a criminal case. Jones, a former federal prosecutor, stated that it is not their job to build a criminal case. There will be temptation in the hearings to make it all about Trump. They’ll lose many people if they do. This was about an attack on democracy. It continues to be that way.
If the goals of the committee are not met, if the hearings fail in their mission to protect democratic norms or punish those who seek to overthrow the will of voters, members may accept a consolation prize.
They’ll release a report in the fall based on the 1000 interviews they conducted and the 140,000 records they have compiled so far. Democrats believe the report will be a complete account of Jan. 6. The treatise, like the 9/11 Commission and Warren Commission reports, will be analyzed by historians to understand the events that rocked the nation.
Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.) stated that the goal is one of principle. He wanted to make sure Americans and the historical record have an accurate account of what happened, how it happened, and who made it possible.
