As Congress weighs whether to set up a commission, there are many unanswered questions about January 6
A version of this article first appeared in the “Reliable Sources” newsletter. You can sign up for free right here.
Two days after President Trump’s deluded supporters stormed the Capitol and threatened members of Congress, I sent out a newsletter that said this: “As heinous as the attack looked in real time, on live TV and in our social feeds, it was even worse than we knew at the time. It was even more violent. It was even more treacherous. And Trump’s behavior was even more disturbing.”
I could have written that again a month later… and a month after that… as testimonials and video evidence and criminal complaints have continued to pile up. “It was even worse than we knew” was even more true than we thought in January. That’s what makes the riot denialism so galling. That’s what makes the Republican attempts to block a real, rigorous probe into the attack so shocking. Partisans talk of “moving on,” but there is no moving on without the truth.
>> Jake Tapper on “The Lead:” The top three House Republicans “pushed the election lie. Every one of them voted to disenfranchise Americans after the insurrection. I suppose they might be worried about a commission finding that their lies played a role in what happened…”
Unanswered questions
Conservative columnist and CNN contributor Amanda Carpenter has been out in front about the need for a fact-finding commission. I asked her about the lingering unknowns from January 6, and she said the top Q that must be answered by the commission is the following: “Why did it take more than three hours for the National Guard to be deployed to secure the Capitol? What was Trump doing during that time period?”
Carpenter said “there are many witnesses, including House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy, who have critical information about the former president’s state of mind in those critical hours.” But, she added, “an effective commission must also explore what events precipitated the attack. Determining the specific factors and actors who influenced or encouraged Trump supporters to take violent action is an absolute necessity if Congress is interested in preventing future attacks. Only an independent commission can provide a full 360-view for the public about what happened that day and why. We’ve seen criminal investigations and the impeachment of Donald Trump but no judge or jury will explain WHY this happened and that’s why we need a 1/6 Commission to provide that record for the public.”
The next step
The House is slated to vote on legislation to establish the commission on Wednesday. It is expected to pass, despite Tuesday’s breaking news about McCarthy opposing the bill, and other GOP efforts to vote no. The bill’s fate in the Senate is not as certain.
On Tuesday night CNN’s Capitol Hill team reported on growing “resistance” to the commission among Senate Republicans.
Case in point: Senator John Cornyn, who has called a probe into the riot “worthwhile,” and has said “we need to do something to identify the problems,” but has tiptoed past the source of the Big Lie. When a reporter asked Cornyn “are you concerned about President Trump’s continued statements that Joe Biden did not legitimately win the election?” he said “I am not.” Why? “I think that’s behind us,” Cornyn said. CNN’s Lauren Fox followed up: “Is it, though, if he keeps talking about it?” Cornyn then cast some shade on the news media: “If you keep talking about it, maybe.”
That’s a typical, and cheap, way to offload responsibility for Trump’s own rhetoric by blaming the media for bringing it up…
Views from a current and a former Republican
One of the strengths of Twitter’s 280-character format is that it forces folks to make their cases in a sentence or two. So here are two tweets that, so far as I can tell, distill this week’s political arguments.
Mollie Hemingway, the Fox commentator, wrote that a “genuinely bipartisan look at Jan 6 riot AND precipitating Summer of Rage, its media-fueled attacks on federal courthouses, police precincts, White House, the dozens of murders, the billions in damage, destruction of cities, would perhaps be good. Former without latter is a joke.” That’s the savvy Trumpworld position — examine ALL the violence.
Now here’s former Republican Kurt Bardella, a contributor to USA Today and the LA Times, tweeting a widely held Democrat POV: “Asking Republicans to investigate 1.6 is like asking Al-Qaeda to investigate 9.11. The people who helped plan/promote the attack aren’t going to be partners in the investigation.”
“Addicted” to the Big Lie
Among some Trump fans, “there was a psychological need or longing or craving to believe that Donald Trump won” the election in 2020, Peter Wehner said on last Sunday’s “Reliable Sources.” They have “news sources feeding that addiction, giving them the information they want, playing into confirmation bias,” he added…
“The slithery snake”
Oliver Darcy writes: “How much blame for the January 6 insurrection should be put on the shoulders of outlets like Fox that pushed the Big Lie? Some lawyers, as Matt Shuham reported Tuesday, think quite a bit. Shuham spoke to Joe Hurley, the lawyer who argued his client had suffered ‘Foxitis’ when he stormed the Capitol. Hurley said the ‘Foxitis’ remark was ‘not a defense,’ but simply a ‘pointing of the finger of accusation where it belongs: to the slithery snake.’ Shuham also spoke with Albert Watkins, the lawyer for the so-called ‘QAnon Shaman,’ who made a similar argument, albeit in a far more colorful way. Arguing that a lot of the rioters were ‘short bus people,’ Watkins said insurrection participants had been subjected to years of propaganda ‘the likes of which the world has not seen since f***ing Hitler.’ While Watkins’ first point is absurd, he’s not wrong that a lot of people were subjected to potent propaganda…”
Fox moves to dismiss Dominion suit
Oliver Darcy writes: “Fox on Tuesday moved to dismiss Dominion’s $1.6 billion lawsuit against the network, with its lawyers continuing to argue that the right-wing channel merely ‘provided a forum for the losing side.’ The company’s motion to dismiss said that the press ‘must remain free to cover both sides, or there will be a free press no more.’ The motion added that ‘well-established doctrine protects the media’s ability to report and comment specifically on government proceedings like election recounts and lawsuits.’ Dominion, which sued Fox in late March, has argued that Fox ‘recklessly disregarded the truth’ and ‘sold a false story of election fraud in order to serve its own commercial purposes…'”
QAnon world turns to Arizona as next false hope to overturn election
Donie O’Sullivan writes: “The same cast of online characters that so feverishly pushed election conspiracy theories ahead of the January 6 insurrection are now fully focused on the sham Republican-led audit in Arizona — that is itself the result of a conspiracy theory. On the messaging app Telegram, Ron Watkins, who a recent HBO documentary suggested could be the person behind QAnon, is posting multiple updates a day to his 220,000 followers about the ballot counting in Arizona — continually trying to cast doubt on the election result. (Watkins has denied he is behind QAnon.) MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell has been hyping the ‘audit’ too. While claims made by Watkins and Lindell have consistently been baseless, their message is still resonating with some Trump supporters. They are not ‘moving on,’ so to speak…”
