January 6th: Committee or Cabaret?
Hiring a TV Producer to transform the hearings into a blockbuster special raises credible concerns about the committee's legitimacy.
Following the subversive events of January 6, I championed investigations into the mob-induced institutional desecration (or in its’ original French, bouleversement) of the Capitol. And there have been ample opportunities to do so, from the impeachment proceedings to the failed independent bipartisan commission blocked by Senate Republicans. But the Select House Committee on January 6—consisting of seven Democrats and two Republicans—has demonstrated itself to be more an opportunistic political show-trial than a dispassionate investigative committee.
Exhibit A:
Axios reports that the Jan. 6 committee has hired former ABC News President James Goldston as an adviser. Goldston, the former helmsman of “Good Morning America” and “Nightline,” has been brought in by the committee to transform “a mountain of explosive material into a captivating multimedia presentation for a prime-time hearing Thursday,” Axios reports.
This posturing perfectly depicts the desipience that has misguided the committee away from substantive investigative work (that should have occurred during the impeachment proceedings) into a commercial production “as if it were a blockbuster investigative special.” I mean, seriously, who had in mind Law & Order: Jan. 6 Special when brainstorming desired outcomes of a congressional investigative committee? Who assessed the Jan. 6 riots and thought, “you know what Congress needs to do in response? Produce a blockbuster to compete with Thursday Night Football cable ratings.” Sadly, the answer is people who don’t actually care to investigate Jan. 6 and instead wish to capitalize on a political opportunity.
This notion that the Jan. 6 committee has been hijacked into a political weapon derives from New York Times reporting. A piece headlined “Jan. 6 Hearings Give Democrats a Chance to Recast Midterm Message,” is followed by the subtitle “With their majority at stake, Democrats plan to use the six high-profile hearings to refocus voters’ attention on Republicans’ role in the attack.”
It is an uphill battle at a time when polls show that voters’ attention is focused elsewhere, including on inflation, rising coronavirus cases and record-high gas prices. But Democrats argue the hearings will give them a platform for making a broader case about why they deserve to stay in power.
The select committee investigating the attack, made up of seven Democrats and two Republicans, says it has approached its work in a sober, apolitical manner and will present its findings as such. But it is clear that the hearings, coming five months before midterm elections in which Democrats are bracing for big losses, carry high political stakes.
This underlying motive is apparent and blatant with the Goldston hiring. Why else would a committee designed to report back to the House of Representatives choose to appeal to the public through television and streaming? It’s because some members on the select committee are not all that interested in actually focusing on objective investigating. Congress, in general, has never been willing to invest in substantial investigation. Remember, the Senate decided to not even hold an impeachment trial and allow witnesses to testify because, according to Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE), “people want to get home for Valentine’s Day.”
Exhibit B:
On January 6, 2017, newly elected Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) objected to the electoral vote certification for the 2016 presidential election. Just as numerous Republicans would do four years later, Raskin believed the election to be illegitimate and used fraudulent claims to disrupt the electoral process. Then-Vice President Joe Biden dismissed Raskin’s objection to move forward with the certification process. It is, therefore, utterly bewildering that Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) would appoint Raskin to the select committee to investigate Jan. 6 (the 2021 version, that is).
Raskin’s membership in the select committee didn’t just occur because of a blip in Pelosi’s memory, but rather an unspoken admission that the committee wasn’t here to help protect the democratic institutions that the rioters of Jan. 6 attempted to undermine. Otherwise, Raskin’s presence on the committee doesn’t make any sense. That would be like employing the Cookie Monster as a security guard at a Chips Ahoy!™ factory. Or hiring Eeyore as a motivational speaker. Or having China on the United Nations Human Rights Council… oh wait, that one’s true.
Anyways, it comes as no surprise that Axios reports that Raskin is advocating for sweeping, constitutional-altering, electoral institution reform in the committee’s final report.
In multiple conversations among committee members, Raskin has argued that the Electoral College should be abolished — that if presidents were elected by a popular vote, this would protect future presidential elections against the subversion that Trump and his allies tried to pull off in 2020.
Do you know what would also protect future elections against Trump’s subversion? Eliminating the presidency and making Congress a parliamentary government. Or, if you’re inclined to keep presidents, they could be selected from a simple rock-paper-scissors match. The problem with all of these solutions, including Raskin’s, is that they would require amending the Constitution, detonate the institutions that Trump attempted to detonate himself, are irrelevant to the events of Jan. 6, and would be an inferior electoral system.
The purpose of a Jan. 6 select committee should be to investigate how a mob breached the Capitol building and the motives that incited them. Not to propose radically uprooting the electoral process of the Presidency. The violent mob entered the Capitol in an attempt to undermine the electoral college, and Raskin’s response is to expunge the electoral college. Again, sadly not all that surprising considering Raskin objected to its’ legitimacy four years prior.
The rest of the committee members seem to prefer the immeasurably more feasible and productive Electoral Count Act (ECA) reform. The ECA is legislation that details the certification process for electoral votes. While the ECA doesn’t allow for the Vice President to throw out electors at his will, a perverted lie perpetrated by Trump, there is bipartisan support to clarify the process and potentially raise the threshold for legislators to object. While ECA reform doesn’t require a select committee to recommend it, it’s nonetheless a valuable reform that many Senate Democrats and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) support.
But while the committee has an opportunity to support worthwhile reform that’s actually relevant to Jan. 6, Raskin wants more unconstitutional reform.
Exhibit C:
Axios reports:
Raskin also has pushed for the committee to endorse "federal legislation to oppose voter suppression tactics and gerrymandering," according to a source familiar with his comments to his committee colleagues.
He has been an outspoken supporter of the Democratic Party's major voting rights bills — the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act.
Cheney is open to discussing reforms to the Electoral Count Act — the law that Trump tried to exploit to pressure former Vice President Mike Pence to illegally overturn the election — but has no interest in the Democratic Party's sweeping voting rights bills.
As pleasant and well-intentioned names such as “For the People” and “John Lewis Voting Rights” may sound, they are simply masks veiling unconstitutional, partisan legislation that would give the federal government authority to interfere with state election rules and procedures (something Democrats may suddenly dislike the next time a Republican is elected president). And not only is it completely disconnected with Jan. 6, but it’s countering a problem that just simply doesn’t exist. For the past year, Democrats have perpetrated disinformation that Georgia election laws were examples of voter suppression when they clearly did the opposite.
The Washington Post reports:
But after three weeks of early voting ahead of Tuesday’s primary, record-breaking turnout is undercutting predictions that the Georgia Election Integrity Act of 2021 would lead to a falloff in voting. By the end of Friday, the final day of early in-person voting, nearly 800,000 Georgians had cast ballots — more than three times the number in 2018, and higher even than in 2020, a presidential year.
Oops. If the intention truly was voter suppression, then the actual results would make it a gargantuan failure. But, of course, voter suppression was never the intent.
As for the omnipresent problem of gerrymandering, I’m again confounded to find its’ relevance to Jan. 6. However, if it is of great concern to Raskin, I am unsure as to why he has not denounced Illinois Democrats’ gerrymandering that eliminated his Jan. 6 committee colleague’s seat, Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL).
All of this to say, it is evident to me that the Jan. 6 select committee does not actually seek to investigate Jan. 6, but exists out of political convenience. That’s not to say that the committee hasn’t delivered some substantive findings. The text messages from former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows with numerous Congressmen like Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), and Reps. Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Chip Roy (R-TX) helped construct the various communication tactics with the White House. Similarly, Meadows’ texts with public personalities like Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and Donald Trump Jr. revealed their vain attempts to rein in the President, contrasting with their public comments at the time.
However, the committee’s persistent indulgence in matters that concern not Jan. 6, but traditional partisan affairs cost them their credibility. This behavior is not unique to the committee, but is the tragedy that has plagued any attempt of accountability for the events on Jan. 6. Pelosi deliberately overreached in the articles of impeachment that increased the political liabilities for Republicans that supported it. Most congressional Republicans failed in their duty to protect the legislative branch, instead caving to political tribalism. A bipartisan group rejected an impeachment trial in the Senate. Months later, many Republicans voted against a bipartisan, independent committee, allowing Pelosi to create her own committee for whatever she deemed fit. Which, apparently, is a cabaret to premiere Thursday night.