The January 6 Committee

Some compelling tv - but may be missing the plot

The “January 6th Committee” held its first prime time hearing today. It is reported that the committee hired a tv producer to help them make things compelling, with the intent to lay before the American public their case against Donald Trump his instigation of an “insurrection.”

I am not sure they will be able to accomplish this main goal. Liberals and never-Trumpers may be glued to the tv, but they are already in the choir. Trump supporters won’t likely even tune into these hearings and if they did I still doubt anything could disabuse them from their devotion. As for that slice of Americans who are kind of indifferent and on the fence - the people who this committee should be focused on - I am not sure this will do it.

But I could be wrong. I think Chairman Bennie Thompson’s opening statements were a little boring and sanctimonious, talking for almost 20 minutes about his own background, cherishing freedom and different people people heroically devoting themselves to the Constitution. Liz Cheney did a better job of laying out how they will make their case against Trump in a very prosecutorial way - basically saying “First we will walk you through this and show you evidence, next we will show you what his supporters were saying, after that we’ll show you what White House people knew,” etc.

My biggest issue, though, is my own skepticism that January 6 is the best case against Trump. It was certainly the most visually compelling. But he was basically attempting a coup for months beforehand. He called election officials and asked them to “find” him the exact number of votes he needed. He threatened those who would not do as he said. He tried to involve the Justice Department, the military and the DHS in seizing ballots or voting machines. This was the attempted coup and it is very well documented. My take is that what happened on January 6 was more him riling people up after all else failed rather than some kind of coherent, well planned event that can be directly connected to him.

But maybe I am wrong? At the very least it looks like the committee will look back on those previous months. Reportedly they will hear from Brad Raffensperger, the Georgie Secretary of State Trump asked to basically steal the election for him by magically finding votes. I am very much interested in that testimony.

So I will keep an open mind. But I am also nervous about any precedent being set that can be used against protests in the future as protests are a very important feature of our democracy. And at protests, people get up and say a lot of crazy things. It would be really bad if speakers were criminally liable for what a crowd does when there has not been a direct command for violence. And in Trump’s speech on that day, he did not make a direct call for violence.

But he did spend all his time after the November election attempting a coup d’etat. That is pretty bad, especially because it is conceivable that he could have been successful. I’ll keep an open mind as the hearings play out but I very much hope they shine a big light on all the non-January 6 stuff he was up to.