Undoubtedly, politics will play a role when a House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol launches televised hearings today. It is no coincidence the Democratic-led committee is presenting public-facing hearings during election season, following 10 months of investigation. And it is no coincidence the hearings are scheduled for prime time on the East Coast.
While that leaves room for naysayers to dismiss the hearings as little more than theatrics, we challenge those critics to pay attention. We challenge them to consider the truth about President Donald Trump’s actions on Jan. 6, and to ponder how easily our republic can be threatened and how close it came to being toppled.
The Jan. 6 insurrection will stand as one of our darkest hours for as long as this nation survives. It is unpatriotic to ignore the existential threat or downplay what actually occurred. For 18 months, conservative apologists and politicians have attempted to do just that, suggesting that the attack was “legitimate political discourse,” in the words of the Republican National Committee.
There was nothing legitimate about it, nor did it involve discourse. The U.S. Capitol was violently attacked as the perpetrators openly talked about assassinating elected representatives.
One year after the riot, 725 people had been charged with crimes; this week, a man who lives near Auburn and led the Seattle chapter of the Proud Boys was indicted for seditious conspiracy and other charges, along with four other members of the right-wing extremist group. According to the U.S. legal code, seditious conspiracy includes conspiring “to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States.”
Indeed, any other purported purpose for the attack does not stand up to scrutiny. Whether individual participants desired to forcefully destroy the government will be up to the courts; but the mob as a whole clearly was intent upon destroying the democratic process and allowing Trump to remain president in violation of the will of the voters.
The results: members of Congress running and hiding in fear; desecration of a citadel of democracy; and the deaths of at least seven people during or shortly after the attack. No plausible end-game scenario has been offered as reasoning for the riot, other than the overthrow of democracy.
These are the facts that must be laid out by the House committee as it begins televised hearings. A record of the events must be presented without the histrionics that have become common in high-profile congressional hearings and confirmation proceedings.
It is notable that few Republican House members agreed to sit on the committee investigating the insurrection. Only Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois put country before party by participating in an investigation that is essential to the continuation of our democracy.
It also is notable that Fox News, the preeminent conservative mouthpiece, is not showing the hearings live. Instead, it will leave evening broadcasts to propagandists Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson, as usual.
Conservative citizens, however, should be willing — even eager — to hear the truth, no matter how uncomfortable it might be. Evidence revealed thus far suggests that the attack was not a spontaneous combustion, but the result of weeks of planning by Trump and his acolytes.
Hearing that evidence directly from the people involved could provide an important lesson in the fragility of democracy, a lesson that is essential for all Americans to learn.
