House Jan. 6 committee members face tough question of how to hold their own colleagues to account
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WASHINGTON — Shortly before voting Wednesday to seek criminal charges against a pair of aides of former President Donald Trump, Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., the House chairman of the select committee investigating the assault on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, made an offer: Any of his House colleagues who were involved in the attempt to overturn the election and the run-up to the Capitol attack should come to testify under oath about what happened.
It wasn’t the first time Thompson has solicited testimony from House lawmakers involved in the efforts to reverse the 2020 election results. The panel investigating the Jan. 6 attack has requested testimony from three Republicans: Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California.
But Thompson and the tight-knit members of the select panel have yet to follow up with efforts to force testimony from their colleagues, whom they see day in and day out at the Capitol.
“Obviously, there are some people that we have expressed an interest in, and we will make a decision at some point,” Thompson told reporters Thursday.
The decline of collegiality in Congress, punctuated by the Jan. 6 riot, has long been noted. But a decision not to initiate a direct confrontation may represent the last vestige of the lost tradition of congressional gentility, if only because Republicans could turn the same tactics on Democrats if they retake the House in November.
The panel netted a pair of high-profile interviews over the last week, the former president's über-advisers and family members Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump. But the clock is fast running out, with the expectation that Republicans will win back the House in November and shut down or refocus the Jan. 6 investigation.
“This is nothing but a political show,” McCarthy, who is likely to ascend to the position of speaker if the Republicans take the House, told a small group of reporters Wednesday evening. “It's a one-sided trial, and they already have the report written, and they're trying to create a narrative for it, instead of trying to get to the truth.”
Public hearings could start as soon as the end of spring or the beginning of summer, and the panel is racing to finish its investigation, complete a report and, possibly, make criminal referrals before the midterm elections in November.
Lawmakers are “unlikely” to push further, either with subpoenas or contempt charges, against their colleagues, said one person familiar with the House’s investigation into Jan. 6.
But Rep. Mo Brooks sparked renewed interest in the possibility of bringing in lawmakers a little more than a week ago when, after Trump withdrew his endorsement of him in the Alabama Senate Republican primary, Brooks revealed that the former president had asked him directly to “rescind” the results of the 2020 election.
“I have already given at least two statements and two more sworn statements concerning January 6. ALL detail my conduct A to Z. January 6 Committee likely has all of them,” Brooks, who headlined the Jan. 6 rally that evolved into the Capitol attack, wrote in a text message to Yahoo News.
The two statements he was referring to are his sworn testimony in a lawsuit filed against him by Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., concerning his actions on Jan. 6. In the lawsuit, which a federal judge dismissed earlier this month, Brooks defended his efforts to throw out the 2020 election results as protected speech under the First Amendment and noted that he did not directly call on protesters to attack the Capitol.
“Haven’t we already moved past this?” said Rep. Jim Banks, R-Ind., one of the Republicans whom House Speaker Nancy Pelosi declined to appoint to the House panel. Pelosi rejected Banks's appointment because he voted against certifying the 2020 election results. “I don’t think they want to open a Pandora’s box,” he said.
House Republicans are planning to release their own report examining the causes of the Jan. 6 attack, focusing on security failures in the Capitol. The report could also offer a glimpse of what might come if they retake the House in November.
Perry, one of a handful of hard-right Trump supporters who played a role in attempting to overturn the election, declined to say whether he would testify before the panel. He referred a Yahoo News reporter to a previous statement he had given in which he dubbed the investigation “illegitimate.”
Caitlin Dickson contributed to this report.
