Former Trump chief of staff: Final Jan. 6 hearing was political, not productive

Any decent investigation, regardless of topic, is likely to raise as many questions as it answers. The most recent televised hearing of the House Select Committee on the January 6 attacks is no exception. But, for someone like me, who has been both critical of the Committee’s process and supportive of some of its findings, the questions raised by Thursday’s hearing are probably not what the Committee intended. Consider:

What did we learn about Trump’s actions that we didn’t already know? The Committee has uncovered some dramatic video of that day. It has also elicited some compelling testimony from Trump’s innermost circle of advisers. And while Thursday’s hearing certainly highlighted some new footage of the riots and revealed some new testimony, including my own, there weren’t any new revelations regarding President Trump. Put another way: the material presented on Thursday may have corroborated other evidence; it may have piled on; but it didn’t really reveal anything new. And there was certainly no smoking gun that the Committee has been hinting at for months: no direct, explicit evidence of any involvement by Trump in organizing the criminal activity that took place that day at the hands of right-wing extremist groups.

Why did we see much of the same material? Steve Bannon is always good for drama. And the recording of his presentation to a group of Chinese business people regarding Trump’s plan for challenging the election was no exception. But it is substantively no different than podcast video we had seen of him before. And indeed, we saw that same podcast video again on Thursday. The video of Trump’s campaign manager testifying that he told the President he had lost the election was compelling the first time. The replay Thursday added little. The same can be said of the audiotape of Trump asking Georgia’s Secretary of State to “find more votes,” which the Committee showed for at least the third time.

Why did we see so much video of Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer? Certainly, their actions, and those of other elected leaders, were admirable. In a sense, I suppose it created contrast to how Trump himself acted on that day. But if you are trying to make the case that a person broke the law, showing other people not breaking the law isn’t particularly relevant. So, again, interesting television, perhaps. But hardly relevant to the matters the Committee is supposed to be investigating.

Why did the Committee vote to subpoena Donald Trump? Certainly there are some on the left who will be frothing at the mouth now to “lock him up,” and they see the subpoena as a way of doing that. Those people are wrong. The subpoena is almost meaningless. Anyone who understands Donald Trump just a little bit will tell you that there is no chance of him showing up. Interestingly, Congressman Pete Aguilar commented the day after the hearing that Trump got subpoenaed because of his bad behavior, but that Vice-President Mike Pence did not, because “he acted Presidential on that day.” This is absurd, and shows the purely political motivation to the Committee action: subpoenas are issued to help collect information, not as a punishment for bad behavior.

Why did we have the hearing at all? The Committee took a break for almost two and a half months since its last hearing. While a few weeks of that delay came as a result of Hurricane Ian, the other several weeks came a result of the summer Congressional holiday. Having shown no real urgency since July, and with no real new material to display, one is left to wonder why this hearing took place at all.

The answer may lay in the commentary that has come after the hearing. On cable television Friday, there was no shortage of left-leaning talking heads with rave reviews of how Nancy Pelosi not only acted on that day, but how well she manages the House today. And how good the Democrats are at running the government. And whether the Republicans will be forced to address January and distance themselves from Trump.

None of that has anything to do with Trump’s actions on January 6. But it has a great deal to do with next November 8.

People were right to ask, from the very beginning, when the Committee hired the former producer of Good Morning America to present the hearings, whether the Committee’s work would be “made for TV.”

What the final hearing seemed to reveal is that they were really “made for the midterms.”

This story was originally published October 15, 2022 at 5:55 AM.