The January 6 Hearings - Part One

I think it's fair to say that the House January 6 select committee's televised hearings stormed out of the gate the other night. 

The committee showed new footage of the insurrection from that day, putting it into proper context and outlining a basic narrative that subsequent hearings will follow.  In addition, ranking Republican Vice Chair Liz Cheney of Wyoming laid out a blunt, outlined seven-point plan Trump had to keep the Presidency despite his loss to Joe Biden.  It reads as follows:

• President Trump engaged in a massive effort to spread false and fraudulent information to the American public claiming the 2020 election was stolen from him.
• President Trump corruptly planned to replace the Acting Attorney General, so that the Department of Justice would support his fake election claims.
• President Trump corruptly pressured Vice President Pence to refuse to count certified electoral votes in violation of the US Constitution and the law.
• President Trump corruptly pressured state election officials, and state legislators, to change election results.
• President Trump’s legal team and other Trump associates instructed Republicans in multiple states to create false electoral slates and transmit those slates to Congress and the National Archives.
• President Trump summoned and assembled a violent mob in Washington and directed them to march on the US Capitol.
• As the violence was underway, President Trump ignored multiple pleas for assistance and failed to take immediate action to stop the violence and instruct his supporters to leave the Capitol.

The facts as Cheney and Democratic Chair Bennie Thompson of Mississippi presented them certainly ft this narrative like a velvet glove.  And then came the iron fists: Former Attorney General William Barr insists that Trump lost the election fair and square, and Ivanka Trump, Donald's pseudo-attractive daughter, agrees with Barr!

Fleshing all of this out was testimony from Capitol Policewoman Caroline Edwards, who recalled the violence at the insurrection and explained how she was pushed back with brute force and blacked out momentarily before resuming her efforts to hold back the mob.  Even more devastating was the testimony from British documentary filmmaker Nick Quested, who was making a film about the polarization of American politics and filming leaders of the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers involved plotting the takeover of the Capitol - on the night of January 5! - thus belying the idea that this "demonstration" was "spontaneous." 

The best is yet to come.  Over the course of more televised hearings this month, the January 6 committee will offer greater details of how that day played out - the better to place the blame for the insurrection squarely on Trump.  Republicans - and Trump - are already calling this a partisan witch hunt, insisting that it's better to investigate the root causes of January 6 by looking into electoral irregularities involving vote-by-mail practices as a result of the pandemic - irregularities  that didn't exist - and questions into Speaker Pelosi's role in beefing up security for the electoral vote count.  Liz Cheney, for one, isn't having any of that.  As she said the other night at the first hearing, when she said her fellow Republicans were "defending the indefensible":

"There will come a day when Donald Trump will be gone. But your dishonor will remain."

Will any of this matter? We'll see.