A typical congressional hearing involves a pile of lengthy statements – what some might consider lewdness. There are crude guerrilla exchanges that can obscure the substance in question. Visual presentations usually include a tripod. The TV audience is mainly C-SPAN.
But the congressional hearing was completely, albeit temporarily, redefined last month by an elected House of Representatives committee investigating President Donald J. Trump to stay in power.
The five sessions the panel has produced so far this month look like a rigorously written script for a TV series. Each episode has a specific story with a beginning, middle and end. The characters and villains are clearly identified. Only a few committee members speak at each hearing, and those who do do so often read from teleprompters.
The answers to the questions are known before they are asked. There is no greatness or guerrilla malice.
Earlier this month, the committee adjourned its third scheduled hearing for a reason far different from what usually worries traditional Capitol Hill elected officials and associates: Their writers and producers needed more time to sharpen their scripts and cut better videos, participants in the decision said.
When the hearing finally took place on Thursday, members – like all cable networks broadcast it live – combined testimony videos, audio from interviews and other materials to document in detail how Mr Trump tried to put pressure on the ministry. of justice to support its schemes.
“For the first time since Trump became president, there is a clear message and a clear story to tell,” said Michael Weissman, a longtime producer and CEO of network and cable television who watched live coverage of sports, news and entertainment events. . “It was muddy in the past, they talked to each other, there was a game in front of the camera and the Democrats had a hard time getting their story out. This is different.”
At the end of the day, the commission’s success or failure will depend above all on the strength of the extensive factual information it has gathered on Mr Trump’s continued efforts to reverse his loss in the 2020 elections and disrupt the peaceful transfer of power. But it also faces the challenge of presenting its evidence in a way that could break through to the public in a highly polarized environment in which Republicans often receive their news from pro-Trump sources.
The committee is aided by James Goldston, a former head of ABC News, who leads a small team that reviews hours of testimony and vivid, sometimes disturbing footage from the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol to gather presentations.
But the commission’s ability to draw on all of this material is due to the decision taken by members and investigators months ago to film witness testimony, which is largely unheard of on Capitol Hill.
Armed with thousands of hours of recorded testimony, investigators and producers working for the commission have identified only the excerpts they need to narrate. This is a tactic that keeps the story going, but there is another great benefit: the ability to use edited video means that the committee should not call for live testimony from witnesses who could take the opportunity to help Mr. n Trump.
The commission managed to sustain its approach only because Republican leader Kevin McCarthy of California decided last year not to appoint members of the commission after President Nancy Pelosi blocked two of his elections. As a result, the only Republicans on the committee, Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the vice president, and Adam Kinsinger of Illinois, are in line with Democrats in Mr Trump’s view of democracy as a threat to democracy.
And while current and former members of Congress have said it is very unlikely that another committee will take the approach, they have said the panel has probably changed things permanently in at least one way: recorded testimony in investigations is likely to become the norm and relied upon. on strongly by Republicans if they regain control of the House of Representatives or the Senate in November.
“In a sense, this is the first hearing in Congress in the 21st century,” said Jamie Ruskin, a Democrat from Maryland and a member of the committee who is due to give a presentation at the committee’s next hearing. “We really made full use of the video, tweets and emails and mixed the technology with live statements from witnesses and members.”
The goal, Mr Ruskin said, is to create compelling television, with voters looking forward to the next session as if it were a drama series.
“It’s one thing to tell America that there has been an attempt at a coup and a violent uprising,” he said. “It’s different to actually tell the inner story of how these things happened and what the human dimension is.”
Mr Trump’s allies have dismissed the process as a show business ploy that lacks balance and ignores testimony useful to the former president.
The videos irritated Mr. Trump, who has long been proud of his instincts for good television.
“These losers continue to edit videos,” Mr Trump told staff.
Mr Trump has been watching the hearings closely, expressing surprise at testimony against him by former administration officials and even members of his family, aides said. Mr Trump has also repeatedly told staff that the episodes the former advisers discussed on video simply “did not happen”.
A person familiar with the discussions between Mr Trump and Mr McCarthy at the time said the former president had supported leaving the commission after the election of the leader of the House of Representatives was blocked.
And some witnesses claim that the panel used their testimony out of context. A Trump adviser, Jason Miller, said the commission had unfairly cut short parts of his interview. Mr Miller complained that the panel had made “selective edits” in an attempt to “pit MAGA teammates against each other” and Mr Trump.
If they wanted to keep the quality of production high, committee members decided they only had staff and bandwidth to hold two hearings a week, a conclusion that led them to postpone the hearing on Mr Trump’s attempts to use the Department of Justice. to remain in power.
Each hearing includes an element behind the scenes. The committee has released footage of high-ranking members of Mr Trump’s administration, such as former Attorney General William P. Barr, speaking openly as if exchanging military stories. Mr Bar, in an open sports jacket and surrounded by his high-paying lawyers, was cursed as he described to investigators how he told Mr Trump that his allegations of electoral fraud were false.
The commission then released footage of Mr Trump’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, speaking in a conference call similar to Zoom, as she told investigators she respected and trusted Mr Bar when he publicly rejected her father.
The hearings also introduced new characters who were largely unknown to even the closest followers of Trump’s history. Among them is Eric Hershman, a White House lawyer in the final days of his rule. Sitting in what looked like a luxury office with a black baseball bat labeled “Justice” on the wall behind him, Mr. Hershman passed on swearing and reproaches to the lawyers Mr. Trump used to try. to cancel the election.
Key revelations from the January 6 hearings
After the commission was formed last July, the commission took months to recruit its staff by hiring more than a dozen investigators, mostly former federal prosecutors. Their first interviews, such as those of senior Justice Ministry officials, were conducted with audio recordings only.
As the investigation gained momentum last fall, the commission made the critical decision to record each interview.
Representative Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat from California, spoke at a committee meeting, urging future interviews to be videotaped for use in public hearings. Among others who insisted on this approach was Timothy J. Heafey, the commission’s chief investigating adviser who has never worked on Capitol Hill before.
To persuade witnesses to sit for recorded interviews, investigators told them that the footage would guarantee accuracy and would likely mean they would not have to return to testify at a hearing. Over time, the panel improves with the use of video angles and quality; The interview with Mr Barr, one of the last conducted by the committee before the public hearings began, showed that he was speaking directly to the camera and hence to the American people.
What happened, committee officials and aides said, were congressional hearings different from those that preceded them.
Instead of wasting viewers’ time questioning witnesses for eight hours, the commission can reduce a person’s testimony to a single conviction. There’s no need to risk sparring a pro-Trump witness when the commission can extract key statements from a recording.
The hearings also included schedules and extended installations, which could take weeks to assemble. For a recent campaign to dig into Mr. Trump’s campaign of pressure on his own vice president, staff members have been working until the morning of the hearing to gather detailed graphs showing how close the crowd has come to Vice President Mike Pence.
The presentations also called for discipline on the part of the committee members, most of whom were not heard in any of the hearings by agreement between them, in order to focus on presenting the evidence in the most convincing way possible.
Representative Pete Aguilar, a Democrat from California, who is leading the presentation for the hearing of the committee examining Mr. Trump’s campaign of pressure on Mr. Pence, …
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