As a result of the four hearings that have been held in the past few weeks by the House committee investigating the attack on January 6, with their clear and uninterrupted narratives about Vice President Donald J. Trump’s effort to undermine the peaceful transfer of power, some pro-Trump Republicans are wringing their hands with regret about a decision that was made nearly a year ago.
The decision made by Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the minority leader, to withdraw all of his nominees to the committee during the summer of 2017 was a turning point that resulted in the nine-member investigative committee not having a single ally of Mr. Trump. This decision was made in the midst of a dispute with Speaker Nancy Pelosi over her rejection of McCarthy’s first two choices.
Because the committee has issued dozens of subpoenas and conducted interviews behind closed doors with hundreds of witnesses, Republicans loyal to Mr. Trump have been complaining for months, primarily in private, that they have no insight into the inner workings of the committee. This is due to the fact that the committee has interviewed witnesses behind closed doors.
However, after the public display of what the panel has learned this month, which included damning evidence against Mr. Trump and his allies.
Mr. Trump is one of the people who has been questioning the decision that Mr. McCarthy made.
In order to examine the acts that Mr. Trump and his friends took in the lead up to the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, the committee recruited more than a dozen individuals who had previously worked as federal prosecutors.
The committee has constructed a storyline that is broken up into chapters and focuses on the former president’s efforts to maintain his hold on power. Members of the group have previous experience working in television production.
As a result of the committee’s actions, it has not been required to deal with testimony from the podium highlighting the accomplishments of Mr. Trump’s conservative policy agenda. There has been no interrogation of the panel’s witnesses by the opposing side (cross-examination). There will be no criticism of President Biden allowed during the sessions. Avoid diverting attention away from the former president in the probe. At the end of the day, there has been absolutely no defence of Mr. Trump.
This month, the committee provided significant evidence of Mr. Trump’s conduct, outlining how the former president exerted pressure on Vice President Mike Pence to go through with a plan to unilaterally reverse his election result even after Pence informed him this was illegal to do so.
On Tuesday, the panel presented fresh details of how the former president attempted to bully, cajole, and bluff his way into invalidating his defeat in the 2020 election in states all over the country.
The committee has also enlisted prominent Republicans as witnesses to bolster its case, which has left Mr. Trump’s friends with an impossible job to accomplish: How are they going to defend him, even from the outside, when the evidence against him comes from Republican attorneys, a nationally regarded conservative judge, his campaign aides, and even his own daughter? Even from the outside, how are they going to defend him?
It has come to the notice of Mr. Trump, amongst others, that the efficacy of the hearings in placing Mr. Trump at the centre of the campaign to reverse the election results has grabbed Mr. Trump’s attention. This week, he has made it quite clear that he wants more Republicans to defend him, and he is angry that the hearings are being shown on national television without any voices that support Trump.
Liz Cheney, a Republican representative from Wyoming, and Adam Kinzinger, a Republican representative from Illinois, are the only two Republicans serving on the committee, and both of them have taken a firm stance against Mr. Trump. It was Ms. Pelosi who was the one who appointed them, not Mr. McCarthy.
In July, Mr. McCarthy came to the conclusion that it would be more advantageous for him politically to criticise the committee from the sidelines than to pick members of his party that Ms. Pelosi would find acceptable. He claims that she disqualified two of his top choices for the panel, who were Representatives Jim Banks of Indiana and Jim Jordan of Ohio, and that he was forced to take a stance as a result.
Ms. Pelosi said that she was unable to provide permission for the duo to participate due to the activities they took in the immediate aftermath of the disturbance as well as the remarks they had made that cast doubt on the inquiry. (As a direct result of the committee’s investigation, Mr. Jordan has been served with a subpoena; he has a strong working relationship with Mr. Trump.) The decision made by the speaker immediately prompted Mr. McCarthy to declare that Republicans would abstain from participating on the panel.