Jan. 6 shook US democracy. Has Jan. 6 committee helped shore it up?
| Washington
The House committee tasked with investigating the attack on the U.S. Capitol made its closing arguments to the American public today and voted 9-0 to subpoena former President Donald Trump.
Committee members highlighted snippets from more than a million Secret Service communications in the days and hours leading up to the breach of the Capitol, bolstering their thesis that then-President Trump had incited an angry and armed mob and bears singular responsibility for the violence that ensued.
Why We Wrote This
The final meeting of the Jan. 6 committee resulted in a historic decision to subpoena a former president. As the committee nears the end of its work, we look at what it has – and hasn’t – changed, and what could lie ahead.
“He is the one person at the center of the story of what happened on Jan. 6. We want to hear from him,” said Chair Bennie Thompson, adding that it’s the committee’s responsibility to be fair and tell the most complete story possible – and it’s Mr. Trump’s responsibility to be accountable to the American people. “He is required to answer for his actions.”
Getting Mr. Trump to testify may not prove feasible in the roughly three months remaining in the current Congress.
Establishing facts around the causes and events of Jan. 6 may be important not only for posterity, but also for the nation’s present politics, whose divisions were both reflected in and exacerbated by the attack. Those same forces interfered with creating a bipartisan congressional investigation and, to some critics, undermined perceptions of the committee’s credibility.
Though the hearings do not appear to have moved the needle much among Democrats or Republicans, one summer poll showed that a third of independent voters now see the attack as more serious. Its full impact could take years to be seen.
The House committee tasked with investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol made its closing arguments to the American public today and voted 9-0 to subpoena former President Donald Trump.
They highlighted snippets from more than a million Secret Service communications in the days and hours leading up to the breach of the Capitol, bolstering their thesis that then-President Donald Trump had incited a mob and bears singular responsibility for the violence that ensued.
“Armed and Ready, Mr. President!” read one snippet of intelligence presented in a Secret Service email on Dec. 24, 2020, about two weeks before the Jan. 6 joint session of Congress to formalize Joe Biden’s election victory.
Why We Wrote This
The final meeting of the Jan. 6 committee resulted in a historic decision to subpoena a former president. As the committee nears the end of its work, we look at what it has – and hasn’t – changed, and what could lie ahead.
“[T]he protesters should ‘start marching into the chambers.’”
“… ‘make sure they know who to fear.’”
Two days later, another Secret Service email included this from a tipster: “Their plan is to literally kill people.”
Yet on Jan. 6, even as the Secret Service was sharing alerts of armed Trump rallygoers and a midmorning threat that Vice President Mike Pence would be “a dead man walking if he doesn;t [sic] do the right thing,” the president urged the crowd to march down to the Capitol.
For more than two hours Thursday, the committee’s nine members recapped the president’s role in the events of Jan. 6 that they laid out over eight hearings this summer, with soundbites from a wide range of witnesses including Mr. Trump’s White House lawyers, advisers, campaign officials, and Justice Department officials. They reiterated that Jan. 6 represented a major threat to American democracy – a threat that did not disappear when Joe Biden was inaugurated – and one that could cause further damage if not checked.
At the end of the hearing, Chair Bennie Thompson announced a vote on whether to subpoena Mr. Trump, and laid out the case for doing so.
“He is the one person at the center of the story of what happened on Jan. 6. We want to hear from him,” said Chair Bennie Thompson.
It’s the committee’s responsibility to be fair and tell the most complete story possible, he added – and it’s Mr. Trump’s responsibility to be accountable to the American people. “He is required to answer for his actions.”
Getting Mr. Trump to testify may not prove feasible in the roughly three months remaining in the current Congress. Other witnesses who have been subpoenaed have refused to appear, including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Steve Bannon, who was found guilty of contempt of Congress. Mr. Trump has expressed frustration that Leader McCarthy boycotted the committee, leaving the president without anyone to present his point of view in the hearings, but it’s unclear whether Mr. Trump would be willing to appear before a committee he has derided as a political witch hunt.
Establishing the facts around the causes and events of Jan. 6 may be important not only for posterity but also for the nation’s present politics, whose divisions were both reflected in and exacerbated by the attack on the Capitol. Extreme partisanship interfered with creating a bipartisan congressional investigation and, to some critics, undermined perceptions of the committee’s credibility. Divergent views of the Capitol riot have made it difficult for Congress or anyone else to address the root causes and prevent such political violence in the future.
“They put forth a compelling case that, in our polarized nation, maybe did not move those in the farthest corners – but did tell a really important story to the American people,” says Anne Tindall, counsel at Protect Democracy and a former congressional investigator. “And it’s shown us what good congressional oversight can look like.”
Not everyone agrees; even some who have condemned Mr. Trump’s actions that day say the hearings could have established greater credibility among Republican voters if they had tapped a wider range of voices and allowed for robust cross-examination. Republicans, who boycotted the committee after Speaker Nancy Pelosi rejected two of their appointees, have also criticized it for not looking into Capitol security failures that left police vastly outnumbered and underprepared to handle rioters.
Political implications
From its inception in the summer of 2021, the committee sought to overcome criticism of its makeup and scope. Though made up mainly of Democrats, it relied predominantly on Republican witnesses in its tightly choreographed accounting of the events of Jan. 6 and the former president’s role in them.
The committee made the case that former President Trump perpetuated a lie that the election was stolen, despite numerous Trump-appointed judges, political advisers, and campaign officials telling him there was no evidence to support that claim. And it argued the former president must be held accountable for inciting, abetting, and – for 187 minutes – doing nothing to stop the attack as Congress was meeting to tally the electoral votes and formalize Joe Biden’s victory.
The hearings, which at times felt more like a Netflix special than a C-SPAN affair, do not appear to have moved the needle much among Democrats or Republicans. But one summer poll showed that a third of independents now see the attack as more serious. Separately, polling by Citizen Data before and after the summer hearings found that among those who believe the 2020 election was stolen, the proportion who saw Jan. 6 as a violent attempt to overthrow the government nearly doubled from 6.5% to 11%.
Despite the high-profile nature of the hearings, what happened on Jan. 6 – and the decision by 147 Republicans to vote against accepting the electoral vote tallies submitted to Congress – appear unlikely to impact the upcoming midterm elections much, if at all. Politico, using data from ad-tracking firm AdImpact, found that less than 2% of broadcast TV ad spending for House races so far has focused on Jan. 6.
Members of both the House and Senate have introduced bipartisan bills to reform the 1887 Electoral Count Act. Among other things, the bills significantly raise the threshold for lodging objections to the electoral vote tally. On Jan. 6, only one member from each chamber was needed to trigger an interruption in the joint session, during which the House and Senate would separately debate whether to accept the tally.
Legal implications
It remains to be seen whether the committee will recommend criminal prosecution for former President Trump. However, Vice Chair Liz Cheney said the committee now has “sufficient information to consider criminal referrals for multiple individuals.”
In some ways the committee's final report – detailing whether crimes have been committed and by whom, and expected in December – could carry just as much weight as a criminal referral, says Ms. Tindall.
In her view, the committee’s focus on Mr. Trump’s role is unlikely to taint any potential Department of Justice legal action against the former president. Rather, by making the case to the public, they have freed up the DOJ to do its job.
“[That] makes it easier for DOJ to apply the principles in a more straightforward manner and to eschew those political considerations that might weigh on them otherwise,” she says.
The Justice Department has been pursuing its own investigation, including a trial this month of five leaders of the Oath Keepers, an antigovernment militia group of former law enforcement officials and veterans, on seditious conspiracy charges. In total, 11 members or associates of the Oath Keepers have been charged with seditious conspiracy, which involves efforts “to overthrow, put down or to destroy by force” the government of the United States.
The Jan. 6 committee’s review of more than 140,000 documents and interviews with hundreds of people could give the Justice Department additional fodder, though it’s still unclear how much of that evidence will be turned over and when.
The larger social context
The committee’s scope and purpose is different from that of a court of law, and it includes holding people to account publicly and politically. In that sense, its full impact could take years to be seen.
Rachel E. Bowen, an associate professor of political science at The Ohio State University who studies truth commissions around the world, says it’s generally possible within a year or two to determine how successful a commission has been in establishing a social or political consensus about how to move forward. But when it comes to changing the political culture and preventing a recurrence of violence, it can take a decade or more to determine whether that has been accomplished.
While this is difficult in highly polarized societies, it can be done. South Africa’s post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which has been hailed as exemplary, took place at a time when the leaders had come to an agreement but there were still deep divisions and tensions among the public.
Professor Bowen says that while it’s valuable to remove leaders and break up organizations and movements that are harmful socially or politically, the larger context also needs to be addressed. “We also have a lot of cultural/social work to do in this country around the underlying issues that motivate groups like the Oath Keepers, that motivate people to see the other political party as corrupt,” she says. “Trump could disappear, or go to jail – he could be gone from the scene – and the underlying conditions would still exist.”
What next for extremist groups
Anthony DeAngelo, who on Jan. 6 was working as a congressional staffer for Democratic Rep. Andy Kim, says the hearings have been like turning on a light in a dark kitchen.
“We’ve seen the bugs scatter a little bit,” says Mr. DeAngelo, now head of public affairs for the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, which works on disinformation, extremism, and hate. “These groups are becoming more isolated, decentralized, and a little more paranoid.”
However, he adds, they are still very much focused on the same core issues as in 2020.
Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino, compares the impact on these groups to mercury being hit by a hammer. “Its consistency changes but not the toxins,” he says.
Indeed, if the goal is to prevent another Jan. 6-style attack, a congressional investigation will likely need to be complemented by legal, social, and security initiatives.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct the name of the university that hosts the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism.
