The Broken Promises of the January 6 Committee

Questions about the role of the FBI and other prominent government agencies in the events of January 6, 2020 remain unanswered because they were not asked

The Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol conducted its final televised performance on Thursday afternoon, an event dutifully carried live by every cable and broadcast news station. Representatives Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) now plan to exit stage left as their congressional careers come to an end—the former at the hands of disgruntled Wyoming Republican voters and the latter at the hands of gerrymandering Illinois Democrats. It’s only a matter of time before both find a new home at some NeverTrump outlet funded by leftist billionaires to play the role of the “conservative” useful idiot to the Democratic Party.

Since its inception, the select committee has wielded its unchecked authority not to fulfill the stated mission of finding out exactly what happened on January 6—a four-hour disturbance the enabling legislation refers to as a “domestic terror attack”—but as a vehicle to harass, intimidate, prosecute, and destroy the careers of Donald Trump, his aides, and his supporters. Former federal prosecutors for months have interrogated Trump White House officials behind closed doors to produce cherry-picked clips to bolster the regime’s narrative that Trump incited the “insurrection” by refusing to accept the 2020 presidential election as legitimate—a view still shared by the overwhelming majority of Republican voters.

Among specific promises regarding the committee’s outcome, House Democrats initially pledged to examine the “activities of intelligence agencies, law enforcement agencies, and the Armed Forces, including with respect to intelligence collection, analysis, and dissemination and information sharing among the branches and other instrumentalities of government.” Further, committee members claimed to be interested in the “policies, protocols, processes, procedures, and systems for interoperability between the United States Capitol Police and the National Guard, the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia, and other Federal, State, and local law enforcement agencies in the National Capital Region on or before January 6, 2021.”

Unsurprisingly, the committee to date has addressed almost none of those matters. So-called “evidence” instead revolved around plans by Trump and his inner circle to prepare for and fight an election that didn’t go their way—something of an American tradition before it became the basis of an alleged criminal conspiracy after November 2020. There was almost no discussion of security failures related to the breach of the building. Promises of bombshell revelations that would “blow the roof off the House,” as Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) warned in April never materialized.

Committee hearings have featured one dramatic scene after another; tearful and sanctimonious committee members, aggrieved cops-turned-media-celebrities, remorseful Capitol protesters, and disloyal administration officials participated in a public therapy session of sorts—all emoting under the direction of a skilled television producer hired to attract an audience.

For the most part, however, the performances fizzled. The only star born was Cassidy Hutchinson, a telegenic White House aide who detailed a physical encounter between Trump and a Secret Service agent that afternoon. (Her account has not been backed by anyone involved; the officials she named have not been invited back by the committee to confirm her description.) The American people quickly lost interest, to the extent it ever existed outside of the nation’s capital: one CNN columnist fretted that Americans are more concerned about the cost of fast food than the committee’s “compelling” trove of evidence.

During Thursday’s matinee, which Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) noted at the start had been changed to an official business meeting in order to allow for a vote, Thompson promised the committee’s swan song would provide “a clear picture of what took place” on January 6 by making “documentary evidence available to the American people.” But aside from airing a few newly-obtained emails exchanged among Secret...

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