WASHINGTON – The four hearings over the past few weeks by the House of Representatives’ commission to investigate the January 6 attack, with their clear, continuous account of President Donald J.’s efforts. Some pro-Trump Republicans have left Trump to undermine the peaceful transfer of power by wringing his hands in regret at a decision taken nearly a year ago.
California’s Kevin McCarthy, a minority leader, chose to withdraw all his nominations from the committee last summer amid a dispute with President Nancy Pelosi over her rejection of his first two elections, a turning point that left the nine-member commission without an ally. of Mr. Trump.
Mostly in private, Republicans loyal to Mr Trump have been complaining for months that they have no idea about the commission’s internal work, as it has issued dozens of subpoenas and conducted closed-door interviews with hundreds of witnesses.
But this month’s public display of what the committee learned – including degrading evidence against Mr Trump and his allies – has prompted some Republicans to say louder that Mr Trump has strong advocates in the group to try to counter the evidence excavated by his investigators.
“Would that lead to a completely different debate?” Absolutely, “said Representative Brian Mast, a Florida Republican. “I was going to defend him, damn it.”
Among those who guessed, Mr. McCarthy’s choice was Mr. Trump.
“Unfortunately, a bad decision was made,” Mr Trump told conservative radio host Wayne Alin Route this week. He added: “It was a bad decision not to be represented on this committee. It was a very, very stupid decision. “
The committee has hired more than a dozen former federal prosecutors to investigate the actions of Mr. Trump and his allies in preparation for the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol.
With former television producers on staff, the commission has built a story told in chapters about the former president’s attempts to seize power.
Because he did, the committee did not have to struggle with speeches from the podium about Mr. Trump’s conservative political achievements. There was no cross-examination of the panel’s witnesses. Excluding hearings criticizing President Biden. There is no diversion of the investigation from the former president. After all, there was no defense of Mr. Trump at all.
This month, the commission presented substantial evidence of Mr Trump’s role, setting out how the former president pressured Vice President Mike Pence to agree to a plan to unilaterally repeal his electoral defeat, even after being told it was illegal.
The topics of the hearings of the committee of the House of Representatives on January 6
On Tuesday, the commission directly linked Mr Trump to a scheme to present fake pro-Trump voter lists and provided new details on how the former president tried to harass, deceive and bluff his way to undo his 2020 defeat. in the states around the state.
The commission has also used prominent Republicans as witnesses to present its arguments, leaving Mr Trump’s allies with an impossible task: how to defend him – even from the outside – when evidence against him comes from Republican lawyers, a widely respected conservative judge, advisers his in the campaign and even his own daughter?
The effectiveness of the hearings in putting Mr Trump at the center of efforts to overturn the election results attracted the attention of, among others, Mr Trump. He made it clear this week that he wanted more Republicans to defend him and was unhappy that the hearings were being held on national television without votes in favor of Trump.
The only Republicans on the committee are two who have sided directly with Mr Trump: Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kensinger of Illinois. They were appointed by Mrs Pelosi, not Mr McCarthy.
In July, Mr McCarthy said it was better to break up the committee politically than to appoint members of his party acceptable to Ms Pelosi. He said he should have taken a stand after she rejected two of his best choices for the panel: Indiana’s Jim Banks and Ohio’s Jim Jordan.
Ms. Pelosi said she could not allow the couple to participate, based on their actions around the riot and the comments they made to undermine the investigation. (Mr Jordan was subsequently summoned by the committee for his close relationship with Mr Trump.) The speaker’s decision led directly to Mr McCarthy’s announcement that Republicans would boycott the panel.
“When Pelosi wrongly didn’t let them, we had to choose other people,” Trump said in an interview with Punchbowl News. “We have a lot of good people in the Republican Party.
Updated
June 21, 2022, 6:52 PM ET
According to someone familiar with his remarks, Mr. Trump is openly grumbling about the composition of the panel. Some members of the far-right House Caucasus Freedom Caucasus have also complained privately about the lack of pro-Trump Republicans in the panel, the man said.
Mr McCarthy’s relatives say Democrats who control the committee are unlikely to allow his nominees much power or influence over the committee’s work.
The hearings will resume on Thursday with a session on Mr Trump’s efforts to put a loyalist at the helm of the Justice Department to meet his demands for more investigations into baseless allegations of electoral fraud.
The panel is planning at least two more hearings in July, according to its chairman, Miss Ben Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat. These hearings are expected to explain how a mob of violent extremists attacked the Capitol and how Mr Trump did nothing to end the violence for more than three hours.
Asked Tuesday about the former president’s comments on the commission on January 6th, Mr McCarthy spoke instead about inflation and gas prices.
“They focused on a problem that the public is not focused on,” he told the committee. Mr McCarthy added that he had spoken to Mr Trump this week.
One Republican whose nomination Mr. McCarthy withdrew from the committee, North Dakota’s Kelly Armstrong, was a lawyer before he was elected to Congress.
Ms Pelosi approved Mr Armstrong’s participation in the committee, together with representative Rodney Davis of Illinois and representative Troy Nels of Texas.
Mr Armstrong said he had watched the hearings while the committee presented evidence in a “choreographed, well-written way”.
If he was allowed to serve on the committee, he would try to steer the investigation and his public hearings into security failures in the Capitol, he said, echoing a line of criticism that many Republicans have sought to target Ms. Pelosi. .
“It will be much less of a scenario. We will ask questions, “Mr Armstrong said. “There are real questions that need to be answered. My heart is with the police. They needed more people down there. ”
However, he said, he supports the decision taken by Mr McCarthy, who is considered the leading candidate for president if Republicans gain control of the House of Representatives in the November by-elections.
“I was in the room when we made that decision, and I still think it was the right decision,” he said, arguing that Republicans in the House of Representatives should have taken action after Ms. Pelosi removed Mr. Jordan and Mr. -n Banks. “I think that was the only option.”
Mr Trump’s comments have sparked much debate among Republicans in the House of Representatives as to whether this is the right decision.
“Everyone has a different opinion,” said Tom Cole, a Republican from Oklahoma. “Personally, I think the leader made the right call. The moment the speaker decided who the Republican members were, it turned against his legitimacy.
Representative Daniel Crenshaw, a Republican from Texas, said he would prefer to see an exchange of views on the panel. “Let the public see how this debate goes,” he said. “That would be better, of course.”
But spokesman Fred Upton, a Michigan Republican who voted to impeach Mr Trump for inciting the Capitol attack and is stepping down from Congress, said he saw nothing but hypocrisy and stupidity in Mr Trump’s complaints. He noted that Mr Trump had made a strategic mistake by opposing a bipartisan committee without the involvement of current lawmakers to investigate the attack on the Capitol.
This commission was due to complete its work last year. Instead, Mr Trump’s misjudgment led to the creation of a House of Representatives committee on Jan. 6, which continues to investigate, Mr Upton said.
“Trump opposed the bipartisan commission,” Mr Upton said. “Once again, he is rewriting history.”
Stephanie Lai contributed to the report.
Add Comment