Much to lament in U.S. hearings on Capitol revolt

The biggest show in Washington this summer is the House select committee investigating the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6. It opened Tuesday and is expected to have a long run, examining the worst attack on Washington since the War of 1812. Like any good drama, this one has tension, anger, sorrow and tears. There was much to lament.

The first witnesses were four law-enforcement officers on duty that day. They recalled what happened when a mob of armed insurrectionists breached security and swaggered through the halls of Congress, rifling offices and making death threats. They were called “traitor” and worse as they tried to defend the Capitol. They endured physical blows, which they called “torture.” One is now disabled.

They told their stories in cinematic detail, with sounds and images as horrifying today as they were seven months ago. Some film came from body cameras worn by these officers.

Here was one trapped in a revolving door, screaming in agony as an assailant attempted to rip off his gas mask. Here was another, fearing he was going to die at the hands of the attackers, pleading, “I have kids.”

Their testimony took three and a half hours. Like many such committee hearings — such as those around Donald Trump's two impeachments — it was, to a degree, choreographed.

In the battle for public opinion, this is normal today. Congressional hearings are not political conventions, but they are scripted similarly. Questions and statements are prepared, answers are anticipated, witnesses are chosen to make an impression.

So the Democrats are mounting a show made for television, which gave this first hearing broad coverage. National Public Radio carried it live — “in its entirety and vulgarity,” as one announcer declared — including unedited recordings of the epithets and expletives.

But if the show was dramatic, it was remarkably free of grandstanding. The hearing had no partisan antics, theatrics and posturing, largely because the committee's two Republicans, Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, refused to go there. Like the Democrats, they were respectful, prudent and dignified. Cheney talked about “the miracle of American democracy” and Kinzinger, shaken and tearful, about the high seriousness of the committee's work. For this, both are now pariahs in their own party.

But the real show was the one staged outside by rejectionist Republicans, who want to discredit the committee. Having refused to agree to establish an independent commission of inquiry, such as those that investigated JFK'S assassination or the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, they want no inquiry at all.

Of course they don't. Republicans know that the riotous crowd — some 600 of whom have been charged with offences — were anarchists, nihilists, white supremacists and other deplorables. Many have said under oath they were there because Donald Trump sent them.

The Republicans, who were outraged in January when the mob wanted to hang vice-president Mike Pence, are now at peace with this. In the true spirit of revisionism, they are returning the political calendar to Year Zero, as if all this didn't happen. What did occur doesn't matter.

When Speaker Nancy Pelosi refused to seat two Republicans who publicly opposed the establishment of the committee itself, the Republican leadership withdrew its five members. So Pelosi asked the exiled Cheney and Kinzinger to join the committee instead.

Meanwhile, Republicans blame Pelosi for the weaknesses of the Capitol Police (for which she isn't responsible) and insist that Congress should investigate the urban unrest of 2020, an obvious distraction. Republicans are pushing an alternate reality that startled the witnesses: “I feel like I went to hell and back to protect them and the people in this room, but too many are now telling me that hell doesn't exist — or that hell actually wasn't that bad,” complained one officer.

Republicans do this brazenly and cavalierly. They can't handle the truth.

Now they have lost the plot and yielded the stage. This show will go on, largely without them, every performance reminding America of what it lost on Jan. 6.