Rep. Darrell Issa’s wayward take on Jan. 6 committee
Rep. Darrell Issa got pretty much everything wrong the other day about the panel investigating the assault on the U.S. Capitol.
“No one is buying the January 6th committee is a fair investigation. It’s a partisan Democratic farce that has repeatedly abused its power,” the San Diego County Republican said July 12 on Twitter.
Well, polls show a lot of people are very much buying it, even though those same surveys show many Republicans aren’t.
Democrats did create the select committee, but suggesting the proceedings are partisan is a tough sell. The most damning testimony potentially implicating Trump and others of criminal and unconstitutional activity has come from a parade of former Trump administration officials, all of them Republicans. Never mind that two Republicans sit on the panel, including Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, who is vice chair but seems to be running the show.
No doubt Issa wishes the committee’s work was a “farce.” The panel has laid out the factual groundwork that shows Trump and some of his acolytes set the stage for and encouraged the riotous mob. Issa supported the goals, if not the means, of the violent insurrectionists.
The committee also put an exclamation point on what already had been established: Numerous court cases, audits, recounts, bipartisan reviews and journalistic investigations have proved Joe Biden was legitimately elected president of the United States.
The committee did underscore this irony: Though Trump has long promoted the “Stop the Steal” canard, the reality is he was the one trying to steal the election. That’s the farce.
As for abuse of power, that’s another irony: The actual abuse of authority lay in Trump’s attempt to block certification of the 2020 election — and in the votes by members of Congress like Issa on Jan. 6, 2021, to help him do it.
Issa’s office did not respond to two emails with questions about his views about the committee.
The committee has outlined the depth of coordination that went into this effort, and how close it came to succeeding. Issa played a part in that, albeit a comparatively small one given the scope of what went on. It’s no wonder why he’s taking shots at the Democrats on the committee, transparently weak though they may be.
Republicans have been key to setting the record straight. Trump administration officials testified they told the then-president there was no evidence that fraud swung the election to Biden, and some urged him to step in and put a halt to the riot at the Capitol — much of which Trump ignored. This came from former attorneys general, campaign managers, political data experts, national security advisers and other top administration aides.
The truth of what happened before, on and after Jan. 6 has emerged in committee hearings, yet Issa insists on trying to undercut it.
Issa tweeting out his
wayward take about the Jan. 6 committee may seem like Internet trolling of little consequence that mostly finds a receptive audience among like-minded backers. But given the Trumpist threat to democracy that continues to this day, it shouldn’t go unchallenged.
On Jan. 6, 2021, Issa immediately condemned the rioting at the Capitol. But he quickly pivoted to criticize others for not speaking up enough about other violence. That was a nod — and a false equivalent — to violence in 2020 connected with some Black Lives Matters rallies, which were overwhelmingly peaceful, according to research by the Harvard Radcliff Institute.
Issa may not have supported the tactics of the extremists involved in the Capitol assault, but around the same time he criticized the committee, he voted against an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act aimed at monitoring White supremacist and Neo-Nazi activity in the armed services and law enforcement.
The amendment passed on a party-line vote on July 13. Interestingly, all Republicans voted “no,” including Cheney and fellow committee member Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., who are being treated like heroes by some Democrats for pursuing the truth of what happened Jan. 6.
After former and current military personnel were charged for participating the Jan. 6 assault, the Pentagon in December 2021 established new guidelines on what activities qualify as extremism.
San Diego journalist and progressive activist Doug Porter noted that a Military Times 2019 reader survey of active-duty subscribers found that “more than one-third of all active-duty troops and more than half of minority service members say they have personally witnessed examples of white nationalism or ideologicaldriven racism within the ranks.”
The amendment is expected to be stripped from the defense bill because of Republican opposition in the Senate.
Issa also joined other Republicans in voting against the Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act to bolster federal government assessment of extremist threats. That measure, introduced following the mass shooting at a Buffalo, N.Y., supermarket in May, passed the House but has been blocked by Republicans in the Senate.
Issa did not respond to questions asking why he opposed both measures, either.
Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., said the military-police amendment “attempts to create a problem where none exists by requesting investigations into law enforcement and the armed services for alleged rampant white supremacists or white national sympathies.”
Others said the federal government already has the ability to monitor domestic terrorism threats and the prevention act increases the potential for public surveillance abuse.
More than a few analysts contend many Republicans don’t want to alienate people with extreme views who are part of the party’s base.
It’s hard to say if any of this affects Issa’s political standing. He is the overwhelming favorite to win the November election in the heavily Republican 48th Congressional District, which covers San Diego’s East County and part of southern Riverside County.
Even though Trump’s potency as a presidential candidate in 2024 increasingly is being questioned in some conservative circles, the Republican Party remains the Trump party for now.
Trashing the Jan. 6 committee, however off-base, can only gain points on that front.