Washington: It was a prime-time public hearing into the most egregious attempt to subvert a US election in recent history.
But beyond the slick production and media hype, the select committee investigating the January 6 US Capitol attack had a clear set of goals.
Trump supporters erected a noose prop near the US Capitol on January 06, 2021, and threatened to get then vice president Mike Pence.Credit:Getty Images
The first was to establish there was a deliberate conspiracy behind the violence that erupted last year when Donald Trump supporters descended on Washington in a desperate bid to stop Joe Biden’s election win from being certified.
The second was to convince the public that Trump was central to that plot. And the third was to remind people of the broader issue at stake: democracy itself.
It was always going to be a high bar to reach, but for the most part, the committee presented a compelling case, turning to James Goldston, the former president of the American ABC News, to help craft its evidence into a gripping narrative with all the elements of a TV blockbuster. It was worth it.
Committee Vice Chair Liz Cheney, a Republican, with Democrat Adam Schiff and Republican Adam Kinzinger during a break in the hearing.Credit:AP
After 11 months of painstaking work – including 140,000 documents collected and almost 1000 interviews – the hearing on Thursday (Friday AEST) kicked off with explosive opening statements from the committee’s Democratic chair, Bennie Thompson, and its Republican vice-chair, Liz Cheney, the daughter of former vice president Dick Cheney and one of the few people in the GOP to have spoken out against Trump.
Both wasted no time placing the former president directly at the centre of the attack as they laid the groundwork for the evidence to come over the next few weeks.
“Donald Trump oversaw and coordinated a sophisticated seven-part plan to overturn the presidential election and prevent the transfer of presidential power. In our hearings, you will see evidence of each element of this plan,” Cheney said.
Some of that evidence was laid bare over the course of two hours: compelling, confronting and often damning.
One of the most powerful elements involved clips of taped committee interviews with Trump administration officials and family members, showing they clearly knew that the 2020 election was not fraudulent and often sought to tell the president as much.
Ivanka Trump’s testimony is replayed on a screen at the House select committee’s first public hearing into the Capitol riots.Credit:AP
There was former attorney-general Bill Barr, who made it clear to Trump that he was odds with Trump’s view of a stolen election, describing it as “bullshit”.
There was Trump’s daughter Ivanka, telling investigators that she respected Barr, and that his views carried weight for her.
And there was Trump’s data analyst Jason Miller, recounting a meeting in the Oval Office after the election in which he told Trump “in pretty blunt terms” that he was not going to win.
Equally powerful was previously unseen video of the events before and during the Capitol attack.
While Congressional hearings are often characterised by witness testimony and lengthy speeches, this one was told largely through iPhone, GoPro and police camera footage. Some of it was so triggering that members of the audience were brought to tears as they watched the horror unfold on the big screen behind the committee.
This image from video from a police worn body camera from the Jan. 6 riot at the US Capitol, was played as a committee exhibit.Credit:AP
There was also new testimony from key witnesses, including a Capitol Police officer, Caroline Edwards, who suffered a traumatic brain injury during the attack, as well as documentary filmmaker Nick Quested, who was embedded with the Proud Boys on the day.
“What I saw was a war scene,” Edwards said. “I was slipping in people’s blood. I was catching people as they fell. It was carnage, it was chaos.”
Overall, the committee managed to set the scene for what some have billed as the most important public hearings since Watergate, the 1972 bungled burglary that led to the biggest political scandal of its time.
Watergate involved 51 panel sessions, all of which were also publicly televised, allowing millions of Americans to tune in religiously to hear the often shocking testimony of witnesses. As a result, minds were changed and so too was the course of US political history.
But on the cusp of the 50th anniversary of Watergate, today’s Republicans are banking on the fact that most people have already made up their minds about January 6, with polls showing that millions of Americans believe the 2020 election was rigged. What’s more, Trump’s hold on the party appears to be stronger than ever.
It’s also worth noting that this is a congressional probe, not a criminal one. Inciting an insurrection or riot is a federal crime in the US, but if criminal activity is uncovered, it would need to be referred to the Department of Justice, which would have to then prove Trump intentionally whipped up his supporters and intended for them to break into the Capitol and cause harm.
Republicans also know that time for the committee is running out. There are now only five months until the midterm elections in November, when Democrats are widely expected to lose their narrow majority. If or when that happens, any political probe into January 6 is all but dead.
Nonetheless, the stakes are high. After all, history has a way of repeating itself, and there is every reason to think that the Capitol attack was just the beginning for Trump and his allies – and next time, they may be much better organised.
Indeed, despite losing dozens of legal challenges centred on the baseless claim of a fraudulent result, Trump and his supporters have been working hard all year to elect proponents of his “rigged election” myth to powerful positions at state and national levels.
If enough of these candidates are elected as governors, secretaries of state, or members of Congress, they could have significant sway to help overturn the next presidential election result.
To that end, the committee’s work isn’t just about what happened at the Capitol on January 6 last year. It’s also about what could happen at the 2024 election and beyond.
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