POLITICS
Jan. 6 Committee Prepares To Go Public As
Findings Mount
“The full picture is coming to light, despite
President Trump’s ongoing efforts to hide the picture,” said Wyoming Rep. Liz
Cheney.
Mary Clare
Jalonick
AP logo
01/02/2022
09:39am EST
WASHINGTON
(AP) — They’ve interviewed more than 300 witnesses, collected tens of thousands
of documents and traveled around the country to talk to election officials who
were pressured by Donald Trump.
Now, after
six months of intense work, the House committee investigating the Jan. 6
insurrection is preparing to go public.
In the
coming months, members of the panel will start to reveal their findings against
the backdrop of the former president and his allies’ persistent efforts to
whitewash the riots and reject suggestions that he helped instigate them. The committee
also faces the burden of trying to persuade the American public that their
conclusions are fact-based and credible.
But the
nine lawmakers — seven Democrats and two Republicans — are united in their
commitment to tell the full story of Jan. 6, and they are planning televised
hearings and reports that will bring their findings out into the open.
Their goal
is not only to show the severity of the riot, but also to make a clear
connection between the attack and Trump’s brazen pressure on the states and
Congress to overturn Joe Biden’s legitimate election as president.
“The full
picture is coming to light, despite President Trump’s ongoing efforts to hide
the picture,” said Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, the committee’s vice chairwoman and
one of its two Republican members.
“I don’t
think there’s any area of this broader history in which we aren’t learning new
things,” she said.
While the
fundamental facts of Jan. 6 are known, the committee says the extraordinary
trove of material they have collected — 35,000 pages of records so far,
including texts, emails and phone records from people close to Trump — is
fleshing out critical details of the worst attack on the Capitol in two
centuries, which played out on live television.
They hope
to fill in the blanks about the preparations before the attack, the financing
behind the Jan. 6 rally that preceded it and the extensive White House campaign
to overturn the 2020 election. They are also investigating what Trump himself
was doing as his supporters fought their way into the Capitol.
True
accountability may be fleeting. Congressional investigations are not criminal
cases and lawmakers cannot dole out punishments. Even as the committee works,
Trump and his allies continue to push lies about election fraud while working
to place similarly minded officials at all levels of state and local
government.
“I think
that the challenge that we face is that the attacks on our democracy are
continuing — they didn’t come to an end on Jan. 6,” said another panel member,
Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., also chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.
Still, the
lawmakers hope they can present the public with a thorough accounting that
captures what could have been “an even more serious and deeper constitutional
crisis,” as Cheney put it.
“I think
this is one of the single most important congressional investigations in
history,” Cheney said.
The
committee is up against the clock. Republicans could disband the investigation
if they win the House majority in the November 2022 elections. The committee’s
final report is expected before then, with a possible interim report coming in
the spring or summer.
In the
hearings, which could start in the coming weeks, the committee wants to “bring
the people who conducted the elections to Washington and tell their story,”
said the panel’s chairman, Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss. Their testimony, he
said, will further debunk Trump’s claims of election fraud.
The
committee has interviewed several election officials in battleground states,
including Arizona, Georgia, Michigan and Pennsylvania, about Trump’s pressure
campaign. In some cases, staff have traveled to those states to gather more
information.
The panel
also is focusing on the preparations for the Jan. 6 rally near the White House
where Trump told his supporters to “fight like hell” — and how the rioters may
have planned to block the electoral count if they had been able to get their
hands on the electoral ballots.
They need
to amplify to the public, Thompson said, “that it was an organized effort to
change the outcome of the election by bringing people to Washington ... and ultimately
if all else failed, weaponize the people who came by sending them to the
Capitol.”
About 90%
of the witnesses called by the committee have cooperated, Thompson said,
despite the defiance of high-profile Trump allies such as Steve Bannon and
former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows. Lawmakers said they have been
effective at gathering information from other sources in part because they
share a unity of purpose rarely seen in a congressional investigation.
House
Republican leader Kevin McCarthy of California, a close Trump ally, decided not
to appoint any GOP members to the committee after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi,
D-Calif., rejected two of his picks last summer.
Pelosi, who
created the select committee after Republican senators rejected an evenly
bipartisan outside commission, subsequently appointed Republicans Cheney and
Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, Trump critics who shared the Democrats’ desire to
investigate the attack.
“I think
you can see that Kevin made an epic mistake,” Kinzinger said. “I think part of
the reason we’ve gone so fast and have been so effective so far is because
we’ve decided and we have the ability to do this as a nonpartisan
investigation.”
Kinzinger said
the investigation would be “a very different scene” if Republicans allied with
Trump were participating and able to obstruct some of their work.
“I think in
five or 10 years, when school kids learn about Jan. 6, they’re going to get the
accurate story,” Kinzinger said. “And I think that’s going to be dependent on
what we do here.”
Democrats
say having two Republicans working with them has been an asset, especially as
they try to reach conservative audiences who may still believe Trump’s
falsehoods about a stolen election.
“They bring
to the table perspectives and ability to translate a little bit what is being
reflected in conservative media, or how this might be viewed through a
conservative lens,” says Rep. Stephanie Murphy, D-Fla. “And that’s been really
helpful.”
There is
“no division, no hostility, no partisan bickering — it’s like, let’s just get
this job done,” said California Rep. Zoe Lofgren, another member and a veteran
of congressional investigations going back to the Watergate investigation of
President Richard Nixon when she was a staffer on the House Judiciary
Committee.
The nine-member
group has bonded over a friendly text chain where they discuss business and
occasionally their personal lives. There are messages wishing a happy birthday,
for example, or congratulating another on a child’s wedding.
“It’s good,
it’s how Congress should be,” said Rep. Pete Aguilar, D-Calif.
Aguilar
says the biggest challenges for the committee are the calendar and the small
group of Trump loyalists who are trying to run out the clock by stonewalling or
suing them. In the end, he said, he thinks the committee’s final report will
stand the test of time, similar to the investigations of the 9/11 attacks and
Watergate.
For now,
though, “we are still in the eye of the hurricane,” Aguilar said.
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