On Tuesday, after weeks of presenting fragments of evidence and detailed testimony to show how the Trump administration disseminated the Big Lie and contributed to a violent insurrection, the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol presented a persuasive timeline with a clear intent: building up to a ground-shaking finale.
Like the penultimate episode of an intense TV drama, Tuesday's hearing opened with a "previously on ..." montage of flashbacks, advanced the narrative, then closed with a staggering cliffhanger. In the final minutes of the three-hour hearing, Vice Chair Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., dropped the hearings' most tantalizing bombshell yet, saying former President Donald Trump attempted to call a committee witness, and that the committee submitted that information to the Department of Justice. Stay tuned.
This disciplined approach has allowed the hearings to shift with breaking news and new testimony as needed without losing momentum (see last month's questioning of Cassidy Hutchinson), while also organizing the chaos around the 2020 election and its aftermath into a gripping chronology of events. The structure is familiar to fans of serial television — and with each public revelation, the committee has only bolstered the expectation, like an expert writers room, that there are more surprises to come.
Remaining on track sometimes means recapping what's come before, as was the case at the start of Tuesday's broadcast. The proceedings began at a slower pace than usual, but Cheney made sure to connect the hearings to their real-time impact: "Today there appears to be a general recognition that the committee has established key facts, including that virtually everyone close to President Trump, his Justice Department officials, his White House advisers, his White House counsel, his campaign, all told him the 2020 election was not stolen."
Cheney said the new strategy appears to be that he was manipulated by outsiders from his administration, such as Sidney Powell. "In this version the president was, quote, poorly served by these outside advisers. … This of course is nonsense. President Trump is a 76-year-old man. He is not an impressionable child." In fact, among the top takeaways on Tuesday was Trump's effort to make the Jan. 6 march to the Capitol — which was planned ahead of time — look like a spontaneous decision.
Queasy comedy, part of many of the great TV dramas, has also run through most of the hearings, and usually around Rudolph W. Giuliani's antics. It played a role Tuesday as well, with depositions about an "unhinged" Oval Office meeting in the weeks before the riot that recounted events both shocking and laughable. In what other world but Trump's are "the Overstock.com guy," a disgraced general and the White House chief of staff together in anything but a punchline?
That Dec. 18, 2020, meeting, best described on MSNBC as "professionals versus conspiracy theorists," was covered in vivid detail via taped testimony from former White House Counsel Pat Cipollone and others. The gathering included Trump, Cipollone and attorney and advisor Eric Herschmann, along with Powell, QAnon convert Michael Flynn and, for some reason, the former chief executive of Overstock.com. Trump was still looking for ways to invalidate the election results; there were heated arguments and it lasted for hours. And of course Giuliani was nearby, describing White House officials who wouldn't go along with the scheme to overturn the election as "a bunch of .…" Well, you know what he said. Classy, as always.
Continuing with the timeline, the committee then showed how Trump pivoted from dead-end legal avenues to inciting the masses behind his effort to stay in power, with several examples of how he weaponized social media to that effect. In the hearing, led by Cheney, Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., Rep. Stephanie Murphy, D-Fla., and Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., powerful taped testimony from a former Twitter employee spoke to the growing danger of radical right-wing groups like the white supremacist group the Proud Boys and white nationalist organization the Oath Keepers using the internet to assemble around Trump's election fraud lies.
The hearing's two live witnesses personified the impact of Trump's calls to the masses to gather in Washington, D.C., and march to the Capitol. Jason Van Tatenhove, a former spokesman for the Oath Keepers, described how Trump paved the way for the militant group to employ violence. Former Trump supporter Stephen Ayres, who was arrested after he breached the Capitol during the attack, explained how he believed it when the president told him the election was stolen — and now feels deceived.
When he was asked whether it would have made a difference if he knew that Trump knew the election was not stolen, his answer was clear. Definitely.
If the committee can stick the landing in its prime-time finale, he won't be alone.
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