You’ve heard it before. What is taking the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol so long to complete its investigation? I wonder about this and worry that Republicans might “run out the clock” before the Committee completes its work.
For those who want the truth about what happened on January 6 and who was responsible, there is good news this week. The committee will start public hearings on June 9. That first hearing will trigger a series of hearings that will dive into what Trump knew about the insurrection—and whether he was its mastermind.
We already know that after inciting rally attendees outside the White House on the morning of January 6, Trump retired to the White House private dining room despite stating, “I’ll be with you.” For the next several hours, Trump watched the rioters throw flag poles at police, smash doors and windows, and legislators flee for their lives. He watched as the vote count to certify the election of Joe Biden was disrupted. When asked to call the rioters off, he declined for several hours.
While watching the events on multiple TVs, Trump was also on the phone. He had several calls with House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy, Jim Jordan, and others. What did they tell the President? What did he ask them to do?
Did Trump and others engage in a seditious conspiracy which is a felony? Many believe the answer is yes. To convict an individual of seditious conspiracy, the government must “prove that the defendant in fact conspired to use force.” That is a heavy lift: “Simply advocating for the use of force is not the same thing [as just advocating the use of force] and in most cases is protected as free speech under the First Amendment.”
The January 6 committee (and the Department of Justice) already know Trump and his allies advocated the use of force. The investigation seeks to establish that the President’s actions went beyond talk. Who recruited the rioters and paid the expenses that made their deadly trip to Washington possible?
One reason the January 6 committee has taken so long to complete its investigation is that the Trump team has not only declined to cooperate with the investigation but appears to have attempted to hide evidence. Why was Trump using “burner phones” for his calls to Capitol Hill?
If Trump, Donald Trump, Jr., Chief-of-Staff Mark Meadows, and many others were complicit in planning the attempted coup, how likely is it that they attempted to hide their involvement?
Fortunately for America, the committee did not abandon its efforts to conduct a comprehensive, thorough investigation after it met with uncooperative and, it appears, lying witnesses. After 10 months of work, it is ready to start publicly sharing its findings.
Here is what we are likely to learn this summer:
Trump approved the effort to disrupt the certification of the 2020 vote. It was one of several strategies, including dozens of unsuccessful lawsuits, intended to overturn election results. Disrupting the vote certification was a desperate, obviously illegal, action.
Several prominent Congressional Republicans knew the riot would take place and approved it. Remember Missouri Senator Josh Hawley fist-pumping rioters as they streamed towards the Capitol to smash windows and try to hang Mike Pence? The complicit legislators might include McCarthy, Jordan, Cruz, and Hawley, as well as a full clown-car carrying Lauren Boebert, Mo Brooks, Andy Biggs, and several other members of the Freedom Caucus.
Trump’s team was directly involved in raising funds to support the organization and training of members of groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers that were recruited to come to Washington. Fundraising helped pay their expenses while in Washington. The investigation will uncover not only who wrote checks, but also who requested them to write checks and what contact they had with Trump, Trump family members, and White House staff.
White House staff and others associated with Trump developed the strategy of how to retain the presidency and transmitted it to the insurrectionists. This means that White House officials wrote the January 6 “battle plan” and Trump approved it.
A minute-by-minute account of what Trump did on January 6. The expected detailed description of a president watching TV in the hopes that the attack would be successful will further damage Trump’s already plummeting popularity. The disgusting disclosures of a president enjoying the events of January 6 might finally end his leadership of the Republican party.
If the January 6 committee hearings are as powerful as some predict, the dynamics of the 2022 mid-term elections and, more importantly, the 2024 presidential election, could change. Recall that after Nixon’s overwhelming win in the 1972 election, Democrats won in a landslide in the 1974 mid-term elections and regained the presidency in 1976.
The January 6 hearings may prompt Americans who are still confused about the attack on the Capitol to realize it was a violent attack on democracy conceived of and executed under the leadership of the former President.
Stay tuned. It will be a bad summer for Republicans. But a good one for our Constitutional democracy.
J.E. Dean is a retired attorney and public affairs consultant writing on politics, government, nature, and other subjects.
John Fischer says
I expect the January 6 hearings this summer will result in Republican discomfort and hope it also will result in ridding us of Mr. Trump.
Then, this fall, we can focus on progressive capture of our education system, inflation, immigration malfeasance and Democratic discomfort.
John Dean says
Thanks for reading the piece and commenting. I liked your first paragraph more than the second, but you may be right.
If I am right that the January 6 committee and the DOJ will establish more details of sedition, the fall could also be uncomfortable for Republicans . . .
David Reel says
Mr. Dean,
Your response on the following:
Can you share your thoughts on why you are not asking why the Democrats (not the Republicans) who control all the Committees in Congress, the committee agendas and the committee schedules have not moved forward on on a timely basis securing answers that you deem important?
Can you share your thoughts on what efforts are underway in a Congress controlled by the Democrats 9and not the Republicans) to identify those responsible for encouraging, planning, funding, participating in and defending all those engaged in the lawlessness and violence in a number of cities across the country last summer under the banner of protesting against social injustice?
Can you share your thoughts on the question — could it be Democrats don’t want answers to these questions and may run out the clock to avoid answers you are not likely to accept before the mid term elections?
John Dean says
Thank you for reading the piece. First, I believe the January 6 committee investigation has taken more time than I initially anticipated because of the number of witnesses that have not cooperated. The committee is appropriately attempting to nail down facts before moving to public hearings.
Second, I have not focused on an investigation of the urban violence of last summer, so I don’t have an answer on that.
Third I haven’t thought about the possibility that the Democrats might not want answers to questions arising from last summer’s urban violence.
I suspect that if Republicans win control of the House and Senate (or either) there will be hearings and the possibility an investigation on the urban violence in 2023.
Stephen Schaare says
Dear Mr. Dean, Again and again with the former President. I certainly would have thought the mid term elections would have been of greater importance to you.
I will be polite and respectful. Regarding Jan. 6, how do I say this.
Nobody cares! Not a soul. Perhaps. 1% of the voters will be influenced by this matter.
” It will be a bad Summer for the Rebublicans” Excuse me? This is all upside down. Are you more interested in the mid term elections or convictions for “the Orange Menace”?
As I understand, the mid term elections are a referendum on the sitting President. Is that correct?
This President Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. Is a disaster in the eyes of a majority of the American voters. This is not a matter of opinion, look at the numbers.
Everything, and I mean EVERYTHING this President has touched has quickly become a warm, sticky, heap of bat guano.
Perhaps a month or so ago, you described how you and the Mrs. Had tears rolling down your face while viewing the Jan. 6 matter unfold on tv.
That was, in truth, child’s play. Do you expect to watch the election returns this November? May want to grow a “thick bark” in these months prior. I will cheerfully send a palette of Kleenex (the ones with lanolin) to your home.
Please, Sir, I am a loyal reader of your material and very often you reply to my comments-which I respect. Do you honestly believe the Jan. 6 hearings, convictions, so on and so forth, will sway more than perhaps three to four hundred voters in November?
This is not an ” ad hominem attack”. I happen to like you very much.
Crippling inflation, violent crime and the open southern border will rule the day in November. Repubs, Dems and most importantly those Independent voters. All races, genders, conservatives and liberals. The American people do not like living this way. This is widely known. Thank you very much. Steve
John Dean says
Thank you for reading the piece.
I won’t attempt to respond to everything you have written, but I continue to believe that if (when) most Americans understood what happened on January 6 they will disown Trump.
Also, I appreciate that you are not a supporter of President Biden and the Democrats. This piece wasn’t about Biden–it was about the January 6 committee completing its work.
In any case, I appreciate your commenting.
Stephen Schaare says
Thank you Mr. Dean, Though I thought your concerns would be focused on the mid terms, I admit to getting it wrong.
For some time, I have pleaded with you to move past Trump.
Please consider your Trump distraction is important to YOU. This has been a personal, private vendetta for YOU.
For whatever reason, the American voter does not share your sentiments.
The mid terms will come and go, and your “Trump Thing” shall endure. Obviously I “don’t get it”, but you write the column, and I will continue to enjoy your thoughts. Be well-Steve
DEIRDRE LAMOTTE says
So predictable.
This nation is extremely lucky that Joe Biden volunteered to take on the toxic waste dump that the worst administration in modern history left behind with its broken treaties, completely corrupt deals with polluters and profiteers, its botched response to Covid made worse by the Party’s lies and propaganda, its coddling of some of the worst dictators and human right’s abusers on the planet and its abhorrent
treatment of the most vulnerable. The fact that this horrifying clown show is what passes for governing on the right is an insult to voters and it’s time Democrats stood up and told them to take their circus to nowhere, which is where they are most comfortable.
Oh, and of course you think nothing of January 6. Any one anti democracy, anti American agrees with you.
David Tull says
On January 6 the American people were responding to a stolen election by the socialist who are doing their best to destroy our Republic and damn near succeeded.
That kind of bullshit will never happen again.
John Dean says
Thank you for reading the piece. I hope you are not suggesting that what happened on January 6 was okay. First, Trump’s efforts to prove that the election was “stolen” have failed.
When you say “that kind of bullshit will not happen again” I hope you are talking about a violent assault on the Capitol with people chanting “Hang Mike Pence” and looking for the Speaker of the House so they could kill her.
DEIRDRE LAMOTTE says
How rich. A bunch of toothless hillbillies, led by senior members of the GOP, attempt to overturn THE MOST SECURE
ELECTION IN OUR HISTORY, and you are still spouting the big lie. It is hard to take anyone seriously who hold right wing media in such high regard.
You want to talk about “Socialism”? Good, never apply for Medicare or send your kids to public schools or accept Social Security. Also, remember it is “socialism” having the rich blue states support the dumpy red states. Lets cut that off and see how
theses theocratic states survive.
Sadly, the racism, homophobia, and authoritarianism of the American right is real, and it isn’t simply reducible to economic stress. Now wealthy and powerful interests, and individuals like malignant Trump, have weaponized these vices (Buffalo, January 6) and turned them against constitutional democracy. Like in Putin’s Russia, his government can’t address inequality meaningfully, because it created and benefited from inequality. So he invents enemies, and starts wars to maintain a grip on the state. this is the GOP’s playbook.
Finally, any Party stupid enough to put a man in charge of the country who bankrupted 6 business, admitting to sexually assaulting women by bragging about it and who cheats on wives, taxes, insurance and in golf, no less- is a party who has abandoned its moral compass, their honor and their decency. Ditto the MAGA supporters.
Jim Moses CDR, USN (Ret.) says
Uncomfortable, perhaps, for those few of them who watch the “liberal” media. Their own outlets will spin the proceedings as Deep State ranting, then go on the offensive.
Few minds will be changed. The “stolen election” narrative will still prevail, while the inexorable drive towards control of all levers of power continues. Courts hand down blatantly political decisions, now confident in the result of any appeal that reaches the Supreme Court, effectively negating the Constitution. State legislatures continue to move toward tighter and tighter control of electoral processes, with the ultimate objective of deciding who can and can not vote and whose votes will and will not count. We already know what power redistricting has given a minority of the electorate.
2020 was clearly a critical election – stopping, for now, the power grab of an authoritarian movement bent on fundamentally reshaping democracy.
How often do you hear, “my vote doesn’t matter?” Unless the young people of this country mobilize through the strength of social media to register and then turn out in unprecedented numbers, that cynical dismissal of democracy will become a prophesy, and the dream of the authoritarians will have been realized – a nation governed by the whims and prejudices of a bunch of seventy-year old rich white men. Remind you of any other country?
It is not too late. After 2024, it just might be.
Bob Parker says
Thank you Mr. Dean for this clear and accurate column. All Americans who truly care about our democracy should watch the public hearings of the Jan 6th committee and pray that they will have the same effect the televised Watergate hearings had on public opinion. Unlike opinions expressed by others, if people pay attention with an open mind, these hearings will change the minds and votes of thousands of voters. Hopefully, this will offset the effects of heavily gerrymandered states and return a Dem House and energize Dem and Independent voters to return a Senate w/a strengthened Dem majority. Be prepared, however, to have a continuous stream of “move along, nothing to see here” by the GOP acolytes and their media supporters.
John Dean says
Bob, special thanks for your comment. I appreciate it, especially because most of the other comments are so uniformly in disagreement with me.
I hope the “revelations” of the January 6 committee will be such that it will change the thinking of many Americans who consider the January 6 insurrection “just politics.”
Barbara Denton says
This article is so ridiculous I really should not waste my time replying. However, you are whistling Dixie if you think anyone will believe any findings of this kangaroo court of a committee. Please note Queen Nancy would not allow any Republicans on the committee who do not hate Trump. This was not an insurrection. This march resulted in the murder of an innocent woman whose death will not ever be justified and her killer will never be brought to justice. The marchers were not armed. Can you tell us why the Capitol Police waived marchers into the Capitol. Can you explain the marchers who were Secret Service and CIA instigators and informants. Can you explain the circumstances that jailed marchers are still being held under in the DC jail. Your hate for Trump is almost as bad as Deidre LaMotte’s. (spelling?) You really should find a subject that interests those of us now suffering under rampant inflation, mothers who cannot get baby formula, $5.00 per gallon gas prices and the recession we are going to be plunged into after this quarter. Do not forget the opinion leaked probably by an ultra-liberal clerk at the Supreme Court which mysteriously no one can find Do not forget the looming famines that are coming due to the war in the Ukraine which we are encouraging and financing. Let’s talk about something important which is the wish to totally dismantle our Country by the Uber Liberal Progressive Democratic Party.
John Dean says
I appreciate your reading the piece despite your complete disagreement with it.
I won’t respond to everything you wrote, but I do believe that the public (and prosecutors) will respond to the findings of the January 6 committee, which I expect will support the prosecution of Trump and others for sedition. Please also know that I never whistle “Dixie,” which is a racist song.
DEIRDRE LAMOTTE says
You are wrong in every aspect of your comment. I’ll ignore the untruths except for one: Not one Republican would agree to be on the committee except for two decent Republicans who saw an insurrection and have put nation over party.
Whatever the Jan 6 Committee finds out and proves beyond a doubt, Trump cultist will either call it lies or just not care what Trump did. One has to have a conscience and love for our nation’s constitution to be bothered by a coup. Trumpers have no shame, no capacity for introspection.
When better Nazis are made, America will and is making them.