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The Jan. 6 committee has learned some lessons from previous televised hearings
The Justice Department trio of Jeffrey Rosen, Richard Donoghue, and Steven Engel, the three career professionals atop the nation's premier law enforcement agency in late 2020. They were running the department because Trump's last appointed attorney general, William Barr, had resigned rather than dignify claims of election fraud he had already determined were bogus. On Thursday, all three testified to the extraordinary and extralegal requests Trump made of them in the wake of his November 2020 election loss. All three had offered their own resignations when Trump threatened to install an election denier as the overnight acting attorney general three days before the Jan. 6 attack.
Rusty Bowers, the speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives, who teared up as he described how his religion and his love for the "divinely inspired Constitution" compelled him to resist Trump, who wanted him to substitute a slate of pro-Trump electors for the ones Arizonans chose in the election.
Arizona lawmaker Rusty Bowers details the pressure put on him by Trump and Giuliani
HOUSE JAN. 6 COMMITTEE HEARINGS
Arizona lawmaker Rusty Bowers details the pressure put on him by Trump and Giuliani
Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state already famous as a focal point of Trump's wrath. Trump was heard on tape bullying Raffensperger to "just find" roughly 12,000 votes so that Trump could insist he had won Georgia. This was weeks after the state's actual vote had been recounted twice, officially certified and recorded with the Electoral College.
Michael Luttig, a retired federal circuit court of appeals judge and icon among conservative legal scholars, who testified on June 16 "the former president and his party are today a clear and present danger for American democracy."
Gregory Jacob, former counsel to Vice President Mike Pence, who with Pence's chief of staff Marc Short and others told Pence he had no authority to do what Trump was demanding.
Jan. 6 hearings will continue into July
HOUSE JAN. 6 COMMITTEE HEARINGS
Jan. 6 hearings will continue into July
And in addition, viewers have seen a variety of other major Republican figures – including Barr and Short – testifying on videotape that the former president's claims of fraud were groundless and that his efforts to block certification of the Electoral College votes on Jan. 6 had no legal basis.
It should be noted that Pence himself, while not a witness, underwent at least a momentary makeover of his image in these hearings. Widely regarded as Trump's totally submissive subordinate, Pence's refusal to play the role Trump assigned him in the overturning of the election recast him in these hearings as a modern-day Horatius at the bridge.
The rare quality of restraint
Another lesson this committee seems to have internalized is the strength to be found in restraint. Simple in a sense, restraint is rare in the House, an institution with more than 400 highly motivated and self-actualizing individuals competing constantly for attention. Typically, congressional hearings devolve into contests between the panel members, distracting from the witnesses and the matter at hand.
The panel includes two Democrats, Adam Schiff of California and Jamie Raskin of Maryland, who had major roles in Trump's two impeachments and have been familiar media figures ever since. Schiff did question witnesses in the fourth hearing, but apart from that he has just been listening — as has Raskin.
This ability to keep the focus on the witnesses and emphasize the non-partisan has helped counter the Republican criticism that the entire investigation is a show trial or, as Trump himself says, a witch hunt.
The latest on the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade
The Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade Friday, holding that there is no longer a federal constitutional right to an abortion.
