It’s been eight weeks since Liz Cheney, the top Republican on the House select committee investigating the attack of on the U.S. Capitol of Jan. 6, 2021, promised “multiple weeks of public hearings” to detail everything the committee has learned about the riot and former President Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn an election he lost. Not only do we have no hearings yet, but we still have no idea when they will begin.
The one-year anniversary of the attacks has come and gone. Legislation to address some of the procedural weaknesses that Trump tried to exploit is moving ahead in the Senate before the committee reveals any of the evidence it has compiled. Eight weeks ago, the select committee was already slower than initial investigations of Watergate, Iran-contra, and the Trump-Ukraine scandals.
Each week, the committee’s case that it is investigating an urgent threat to the republic is harder to make. Every week, it becomes easier for Trump and his allies to argue that the insurrection is ancient news, and that Democrats are just digging it up now to embarrass Republicans before the midterm elections in November.
The threat is indeed urgent, and Democrats — and the two committee Republicans — are quite right to want to accumulate every detail of what happened. Doing so is not partisan; it’s patriotic. But the longer the lawmakers wait, the harder it will be to convince anyone open to convincing. And there aren’t all that many of those folks to begin with.
There’s been little public information about what’s taking so long. My speculation is that the committee is determined to wrap up its full investigation, which involves hundreds of interviews and huge numbers of documents as well as numerous fights over subpoenas, before moving to the public phase. The work away from the cameras is certainly important. But so are public hearings.
And it’s not just for the story-telling process. Public hearings can put pressure on reluctant potential witnesses. People who have been subpoenaed already have a legal obligation to testify. However, compelling compliance (whether through the courts or through Congress’s own powers) isn’t quick, and while the House should follow through on forcing cooperation, it can do so while the the public portion of the investigation is underway. After all, if new information is turned over — as it was after a recent court decision that upheld the House’s position — that might actually increase the drama if the public hearings revisit something that was already covered once new revelations are obtained.
There’s a necessary caveat: No one should expect too much of a congressional hearing. Even the Senate Watergate Committee hearings only did limited damage to President Richard Nixon. He had already been weakened by information that emerged before that committee got started, and serious impeachment momentum didn’t happen until the Saturday Night Massacre of Oct. 20, 1973, when Nixon fired the key federal officials supervising the Watergate probe, and that came after the Senate hearings had ended.
No one should expect the Jan. 6 committee hearings to deliver large public-opinion effects. But giving a public accounting of what happened from Election Day 2020 through the Jan. 6 attack is still essential. Let’s get it started.
Jonathan Bernstein is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering politics and policy. He taught political science at the University of Texas at San Antonio and DePauw University and wrote A Plain Blog About Politics.
