It’s hard to tell which fact should shock us most out of the first, surprisingly compelling public hearing of the congressional committee investigating the insurrection at the US Capitol on January 6.
Jared Kushner brushing aside as mere “whining” the repeated resignation threats from White House counsel and its top lawyers in the face of Donald Trump’s ongoing push to overturn the election?
The fact that even as rioters surged through the Capitol and members of Congress fled in terror, Donald Trump, the president of the United States, never once spoke to any corner of the US government to ask for help—never once called the Justice Department, Homeland Security, or the Pentagon?
The committee’s allegations that members of Congress sought presidential pardons for their own roles in the January 6 events?
Or the simple power of a brave police officer talking about our nation’s most sacred democratic space as a “war zone” and how—repeatedly injured by the rioters that the GOP has sought in the last 18 months to reframe as “normal tourists” engaged in “legitimate political discourse”—she slipped on others’ blood spread across the steps of the US Capitol?
After months of behind-the-scenes investigation, wide-ranging subpoenas, witness depositions, document reviews, countless hours of reviewing video footage, and delicate internal political machinations, the public portion of the House’s January 6 select committee kicked off Thursday night with a two-hour blockbuster that immediately established the stakes of the work—the former president of the United States attempted nothing less than a coup to remain in power—and recentered its work as one of the most important political investigations in our lifetime.
Committee vice-chair Rep. Liz Cheney, a Wyoming Republican who has been excoriated by her own party for agreeing to participate in the investigation alongside Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, provided a captivating introduction and overview of the events of January 6, 2021. She also highlighted what the committee will explore over the course of roughly a half-dozen hearings this month and immediately gave the lie to GOP dismissals of the investigation as nothing more than a political witch hunt.
The skillful—and politically courageous—presentation by Cheney, followed up by multiple video segments produced by the committee, highlights the coordination among armed, white nationalist militia groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, as well as the singular role Donald Trump played in stoking lies that the election had been stolen and then inviting his supporters to come to Washington on January 6 to protest—protests that quickly escalated into a brutal, violent assault on the Capitol that had lawmakers fleeing for their lives. One of the most powerful video clips showed staffers of Republican leader Kevin McCarthy—who has long downplayed the Capitol assault—evacuating their House offices in terror. Other clips showed the crowd chanting, “Hang Mike Pence” and insurrectionists screaming in the face of police to demand that they hand over House speaker Nancy Pelosi. Cheney closed her poised and pointed presentation with a warning to the hundreds of her GOP colleagues who have excused the events of 1/6: “There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain.”
Committee chair Rep. Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi, outlined how future hearings would focus on the particulars of the conspiracy and the careful construction of Trump’s knowing lies—committee members explained that they saw in Trump’s behavior a “sophisticated” seven-step plan for overturning the election—but Thursday’s hearing mostly focused on reminding Americans of the stakes involved. This was no ordinary political protest. This was no ordinary election loss. The actions of Donald Trump before, during, and after the January 6 Capitol assault instead marked an end to America’s 240-year tradition of peaceful transitions of presidential power.
Instead, Donald Trump embarked on a concerted effort to use the tools of the presidency and the US government to overturn the legitimate, authentic election results—even though his own staff told him, according to their depositions aired Thursday in the hearing, that “there was no there there.”
First Trump lied to the public. Then he tried to weaponize the Justice Department to back his lies. He pressured state election officials and legislators to embrace far-fetched legal theories and change their states’ election results. His team worked to invent and send to Washington invalid slates of electors, in the hopes that Congress would recognize them and allow him to overturn his loss. He summoned supporters and encouraged armed groups to join him in DC on January 6, promising in a tweet that it “will be wild.” Then he pressured Vice President Mike Pence to violate his constitutional oath and refuse to certify the valid election results ahead of January 6. And lastly, he seemingly refused to lift a finger—either to place a telephone call or send a tweet—to summon federal aid as the Capitol and legislative branch remained under violent assault for hours. Instead, according to the committee, only Vice President Pence—himself hiding at a secure loading dock inside the Capitol complex after being hastily evacuated from the Senate chamber above—contacted the military and ordered them to respond and secure the Capitol.
Taken together, it is the most audacious, calculated, and unconstitutional plot America has faced in its history—one that came far closer to success than anyone imagined.
Over the course of those two hours, the committee succeeded in reframing the national conversation and focused on the true horror of January 6. In doing so, it surely raised the pressure on the Justice Department, which is conducting a seemingly slow-moving parallel investigation that has seen hundreds of low-level indictments and charges against January 6 rioters—including the arrest just yesterday of a GOP gubernatorial candidate in Michigan—and a number of more serious “seditious conspiracy” indictments against Oath Keepers and Proud Boys leaders. Thus far, it has stopped short of penetrating Donald Trump’s motley collection of enablers, grifters, and hangers-on.
Despite the shocking clarity of the committee’s opening presentation, it remains uncertain at best whether it will be able to break through America’s political polarization and its increasingly separate-and-unequal media ecosystems. Fox News, alone among the major networks, refused to air the hearings live and instead allowed its host Tucker Carlson, who increasingly features openly white nationalist positions, to spew venom to his millions of prime-time viewers during an hour-long show, unusually uninterrupted by commercials.
In many ways, Fox’s decision to double down on Tucker Carlson’s lies Thursday night is unsurprising. The network’s decision in the weeks after the 2020 election—as Donald Trump built up the Big Lie and set the kindling for January 6—to embrace Trump’s lies and undermine the legitimacy of then-President-elect Joe Biden’s victory makes it all but an unindicted co-conspirator in the violence on Capitol Hill.
The challenge America now faces, heading into next week’s follow-up hearings, is that none of us know what part of Donald Trump’s story we’re living in—the beginning, the middle, or the end? The committee’s work ahead is to convince America to view January 6 as a turning point, not a warning that we will later say went ignored.
There’s a saying, after all, that there’s no such thing as an unsuccessful coup. An unsuccessful coup is just practice.
