Some Republicans regretting choice to boycott Jan. 6 panel
WASHINGTON — The hearings held in the past few weeks by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack, with their clear, uninterrupted narratives about President Donald Trump’s effort to undercut the peaceful transfer of power, have left some pro-Trump Republicans wringing their hands with regret about a decision made nearly a year ago.
Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the minority leader, chose last summer to withdraw all of his nominees to the committee amid a dispute with Speaker Nancy Pelosi over her rejection of his first two choices — a turning point that left the nine-member investigative committee without a single ally of Trump.
Mostly in private, Republicans loyal to Trump have complained for months that they have no insight into the inner workings of the committee as it has issued dozens of subpoenas and conducted interviews behind closed doors with hundreds of witnesses.
But the public display this month of what the panel
has learned — including damning evidence against Trump and his allies — left some Republicans wishing more vocally that Trump had strong defenders on the panel to try to counter the evidence its investigators dig up.
“Would it have made for a totally different debate? Absolutely,” said Representative Brian Mast, Republican of Florida. “I would have defended the hell out of him.”
Among those second-guessing McCarthy’s
choice has been Trump.
“Unfortunately, a bad decision was made,” Trump told the conservative radio host Wayne Allyn Root this week. He added: “It was a bad decision not to have representation on that committee. That was a very, very foolish decision.”
The committee employed more than a dozen former federal prosecutors to investigate the actions of Trump and his allies in the buildup to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
With former television producers on staff, the committee has built a narrative told in chapters about the former president’s attempts to cling to power.
As it has done so, the committee has not had to contend with speechifying from the dais about Trump’s conservative policy achievements.
There has been no cross-examination of the panel’s witnesses. No derailing of the hearings with criticism of Biden. No steering the investigation away from the former president. Ultimately, there has been no defense of Trump at all.
The committee presented considerable evidence this month of Trump’s role, laying out how the former president pressured Vice President Mike Pence to go along with a plan to unilaterally overturn his election defeat even after he was told it was illegal.
On Tuesday, the panel directly tied Trump to a scheme to put forward fake slates of pro-Trump electors and presented fresh details of how the former president sought to bully, cajole and bluff his way into invalidating his 2020 defeat in states around the country.