In the prime time from Thursday, Jan 6 Committee to investigate the attack on Capitol Hill
Washington DC: Americans are processing the nightmare of the slaughter of children in Texas, the racist murders in Buffalo, New York, and the other numbingly repeated scenes of carnage in the United States.
Now, beginning in prime time on Thursday, the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol is setting out to establish the historical record of an event damaging not only to a community or individual families but to the collective idea of democracy itself.
After more than 100 subpoenas, 1,000 interviews, and 100,000 documents, the committee has a story to tell in hearings that open this week. A story for the ages, it’s been said.
How much will the country care?
The committee’s examination of the actions of Trump and all the president’s men and women, more aggressive than any inquiry before it, has produced a multitude of plot lines that together will tell the tale of a violent uprising fueled by the venom and lies of a defeated president.
Dozens of the insurrectionists have been brought to justice, many of them being convicted or pleading guilty to serious crimes. But the committee’s goal is larger: Who in a position of power should also be held to account?
Endless ribbons of inquiry
Did Trump flush incriminating papers down the White House toilet? How to explain the gap of more than seven hours in White House telephone logs of Trump’s calls during the insurrection? Will it stand in history alongside the infamous 18 1/2-minute hole in President Richard Nixon’s secret White House recording system in 1972?
For the Jan. 6 committee, the key question about Trump’s involvement in the insurrection is: What did the president do, and when did he do it?
One aim is to establish whether Trump’s acts are criminal, as one judge has mused they may be, and whether that would prompt a politically fraught Justice Department prosecution of an ex-president.
Trump is not expected at any of the hearings, but his words and actions will hang heavy over the proceedings as lawmakers look to place him at the center of the chaos. It seems highly plausible that he will find a way to rail against them that does not involve being under oath.
The committee almost certainly will look to draw a tight connection between Trump’s vociferous rejections of the election results and his Jan. 6 rally outside the White House sending the angry crowd off to Capitol Hill.
Free from the burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt, committee members are likely to try to show that the riot that ravaged the Capitol was not a spontaneous gathering but part of a broader conspiracy and a natural outgrowth of weeks of denunciations of democratic processes.
Whatever revelations the hearings may produce, much is already known because the attack played out on screens large and small in real-time, and Trump exhorted supporters to “fight like hell” in shouts for the world to hear.
But the committee has been sitting on much more information and will have tens of thousands of exhibits and hundreds of witnesses said Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, the committee chairman.
