SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS RADIO) – The first prime-time hearing of the House panel investigating the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol insurrection served two purposes, according to legal and political analysts who spoke with KCBS Radio on Thursday night.
Namely, as Loyola Law School Professor Laurie Levenson told KCBS Radio's Jeff Bell and Patti Reising after the hearing's conclusion, "setting the stage" for what's to come over the next few weeks by "making everybody remember and see the Capitol riot for what it was."
The committee played a previously unaired 12-minute video of the deadly violence that unfolded as rioting supporters of former President Donald Trump sought to prevent Congress from certifying President Joe Biden's 2020 election win, as well as footage from interviews with rioters who said they took Trump's words – including his repeated lies about election fraud – as calls to arms.
Nick Quested – a documentarian filming the Proud Boys as they stormed the Capitol last Jan. 6 – and Caroline Edwards – a Capitol Police officer who is yet to return to duty after sustaining a concussion in the attack – testified about the violence they saw.
Edwards, amid the "chaos" and "carnage" she described, said she was "slipping in people’s blood."
"Don’t forget, we've had Republicans saying, 'Well, it wasn't a big deal,' " Levenson said on Thursday night. "I think it's hard to watch this and say it wasn't a big deal. But from here, they have to construct the case that it was based upon sort of a plot, false information in an attempt to overthrow the election."
Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney – one of two Republicans appointed to the committee by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a San Francisco Democrat – previewed forthcoming testimony from Trump’s inner circle, drawing gasps when she said Trump responded to crowds chanting for Mike Pence to be hanged by saying that the now-former president "deserves it."
Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, testified that she "accepted" former Attorney General William Barr's December 2020 assertion that there was no widespread voter fraud, despite her father’s repeated false claims.
Her husband, former White House adviser Jared Kushner, testified that he considered resignation threats from White House lawyers prior to the insurrection “to just be whining.”
Cheney also said that Pennsylvania Rep. Scott Perry and "multiple other Republican congressmen" asked Trump for pardons following the insurrection.
David McCuan, a Sonoma State University political scientist and professor, told Bell and Reising he was struck by Cheney building a case, as if she was a prosecutor. Not only against Trump, but the movement Trump inspired.
"It's so different from what we heard in the Watergate hearings, or the Iran-Contra hearings," he said before the Thursday hearing's recess. "This is – in some ways, Democrats have to control this from becoming a spectacle, but also lay out the case in an almost prosecutorial way."
Before, during and after Thursday's hearing, Republicans blasted the proceedings as partisan political theater and downplayed the Jan. 6 violence. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, a Fresno Republican, asked why Pelosi wouldn't hold hearings on inflation and gas prices in prime time, while Fox News host Tucker Carlson called the insurrection "forgettably minor" during a commercial-free broadcast that aired in the hearing's first hour.
Although a CBS News poll found that 70% of Americans believe it’s at least somewhat important to find out what happened on Jan. 6 and who was involved, there is a strong partisan divide. Yet a minority of Republicans (48%) polled felt the same, while the majority felt it was not very important or not important at all.
KCBS Radio political analyst Marc Sandalow said it remains to be seen if the committee will change any minds, especially with the Jan. 6 insurrection no longer on the top of mind for some Americans.
The House select committee, for its part, tried to place it there on Thursday night.
"This was democracy at stake here. That's the case they're making," Sandalow said of the panel's argument on Thursday night. "This was a coup attempt on the United States … and the American people have to understand that this goes well beyond any concern about gas prices. This was the future of the country as they know it."
DOWNLOAD the Audacy App
SIGN UP and follow KCBS Radio
Facebook | Twitter | Instagram
Related
