The incredibly shrinking public face of the congressional committee investigating the riot at the U.S. Capitol of Jan. 6, 2021, has apparently … shrunk again.
Last we heard, the long-delayed public hearings from this committee of the House of Representatives were finally at hand, with eight sessions planned beginning in early June. Yes, that seemed too little, too late. But it was also, we now learn, more than we’ll actually get. The new plan? Six hearings, lasting two weeks. The Guardian reports that they’ll begin with a prime-time session on June 9, end with another evening event two weeks later, and fit in four daytime hearings in between.
The Senate Watergate committee held 51 public hearings, over six months. Not six public hearings, over two weeks. And that panel began its hearings within a year of the June 1972 arrests at the Democratic Party headquarters in the Watergate Hotel in Washington, despite the fact that a cover-up succeeded in hiding the enormity of the scandal until January 1973. The Senate created the committee in February of that year, the hearings began in May, and President Richard Nixon resigned on Aug. 8, 1974.
