Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) announced on Friday that she had filed articles of impeachment against Attorney General Merrick Garland as the FBI’s search of the former president’s Florida residence roils Republicans.
Greene's resolution claims that the attorney general’s “personal approval to seek a search warrant for the raid on the home of the 45th President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, constitutes a blatant attempt to persecute a political opponent."
The search warrant was approved by a federal judge and was unsealed on Friday after the Justice Department and Trump's attorneys agreed.
The warrant showed that the FBI secured classified materials that were taken to Mar-a-Lago and suggests the former president is being investigated for possible violations of the Espionage Act.
Republicans, including Greene, have repeatedly accused the Justice Department of going after Trump for political reasons.
Her resolution claims that Garland’s “effort to unseal the search warrant for the home of former President Donald J. Trump constitutes an attempt to intimidate, harass, and potentially disqualify a political challenger to President Joseph R. Biden, Jr.”
The White House has said Biden had no knowledge of the FBI's search, and no evidence has been presented to dispute that. A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment to The Hill.
Articles of impeachment against Garland are unlikely to pass in Congress given the Democratic majority, and it’s not clear how many Republicans would support the resolution.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan has stirred a storm of controversy, heightening tensions with China and captivating the world’s attention.
For the California Democrat, however, the trip is something much more personal.
Pelosi has a long track record of confronting Chinese leaders head-on, particularly on issues of human rights, stretching back decades to include the massacre of pro-democracy activists on Tiananmen Square.
Her decision to visit Taiwan — a self-governing democracy that Beijing claims as its own — ranks among the most conspicuous exhibitions of that advocacy campaign; Pelosi on Tuesday became the highest-ranking U.S. official to set foot in Taiwan in 25 years.
Through that lens, Pelosi's trek — taken in the twilight of her long career against the wishes of the Biden administration — is not only a diplomatic endeavor to demonstrate U.S. support for Taiwanese autonomy, but a legacy-building crusade for a figure who likes to boast she takes “second place to no one” in her condemnation of Beijing's human rights atrocities.
It’s a historic trip for a historic Speaker — and it may prove to be the crowning global performance of a long political run that’s widely expected to reach an end with the close of this Congress.
“Pelosi has a long history of challenging Beijing — including her visit to Tiananmen Square in 1991 – unfurling an American flag no less,” Sarah Binder, political science professor at George Washington University and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said in an email Tuesday, just hours after the Speaker landed in Taipei.
“If she does indeed retire after this Congress, I suspect the trip will be viewed as the capstone of her legacy on the issue (well, if all goes well, that is),” Binder said.
That “if” has also been on the minds of top Biden administration officials, particularly those in the Pentagon who had cautioned against Pelosi’s visit over concerns that it would trigger a retaliatory response from Beijing. President Biden had vocalized the Defense Department’s apprehensions late last month, telling reporters that “the military thinks it’s not a good idea right now.”
Yet Biden never attempted to dissuade the trip himself, Pelosi said, and White House officials more recently have come around to bless the visit — at least publicly — while warning China against any sort of bellicose response.
“We shouldn’t be — as a country — we shouldn’t be intimidated by that rhetoric or those potential actions,” White House national security spokesman John Kirby said Monday in an interview with CNN. “This is an important trip for the Speaker to be on and we’re going to do whatever we can to support her.”
Chinese leaders have ignored those warnings, following up their initial admonitions with new threats after Pelosi arrived in Taipei. The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs quickly issued a statement saying Pelosi’s visit not only represents “a serious violation of the one-China principle,” but will have “a severe impact on the political foundation of China-U.S. relations.”
“It gravely undermines peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait, and sends a seriously wrong signal to the separatist forces for ‘Taiwan independence,’ ” the ministry charged.
Shortly afterward, Beijing announced that it would launch “targeted military operations” around Taiwan.
Pelosi on Tuesday explained her reasoning behind the trip with some unveiled shots of her own, accusing Beijing’s leaders of doing everything they can — economically, diplomatically, militarily and even through cyberattacks — to punish Taiwan for its enduring resistance to Chinese rule.
“In the face of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) accelerating aggression, our congressional delegation’s visit should be seen as an unequivocal statement that America stands with Taiwan, our democratic partner, as it defends itself and its freedom,” Pelosi wrote in an op-ed for The Washington Post.
That message of democratic solidarity, she added, is even more urgent in the backdrop of Russia’s invasion of a peaceful Ukraine earlier in the year.
“As Russia wages its premeditated, illegal war against Ukraine, killing thousands of innocents — even children — it is essential that America and our allies make clear that we never give in to autocrats,” she wrote.
Pelosi’s place in history is already assured. She was the first woman to lead any party in Congress, and in ascending to the Speakership in 2007 became the highest-ranking woman in U.S. history — a distinction surpassed only last year when Kamala Harris was sworn in as vice president.
Over that span, Pelosi shepherded the passage of historic legislation, including ObamaCare, an economic stimulus package in response to the Great Recession and the Wall Street reforms that followed that financial collapse. More recently, she oversaw both impeachments of President Trump, and launched the select committee that’s now investigating Trump’s role in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
Her shift this week to take on China promises to extend that legacy well beyond domestic policy and into the realm of foreign diplomacy. Binder, of Brookings, said it has highlighted the fact that congressional legislators can play a crucial role in areas typically reserved for the executive branch.
“In a word, their actions can be consequential for public affairs far beyond the halls of Congress,” she said.
Pelosi’s outspoken campaign against China’s despots, launched with her 1991 visit to Tiananmen Square, hardly ended there. In the years since, the Speaker has also condemned Chinese abuses against pro-democracy activists across Hong Kong and Tibet; she’s pressed Chinese leaders directly to release political prisoners; she’s met a number of times with the Dalai Lama, the exiled spiritual leader of Tibet; and most recently, she fiercely denounced Beijing’s treatment of the Uyghurs, a Muslim minority group in China’s western-most province, labeling it a genocide.
Pelosi’s show of solidarity with Taiwan this week has been met with overwhelming support on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers in both parties have cheered her defiance of Beijing, even as it ruffles feathers at the White House.
“I can see how it could create some tension in the region,” said Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.). “But I was telling some people the other night: Don't get concerned about it. I don't think anybody's trying to create an international incident.
“If I had anything to say to the Chinese leadership it would just be: Be cool."
Republicans are also on board. Led by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), 26 GOP senators issued a statement Tuesday praising her decision.
“She has every right to go,” McConnell later told reporters.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Monday endorsed Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-N.Y.) in his bid to represent a newly drawn New York City congressional district.
In a statement, Pelsoi praised Jones, saying that the first-term congressman “has gotten real results for New Yorkers.”
“Once elected as the freshman representative to House leadership, Congressman Mondaire Jones played a vital role in passing life-changing legislation that has lifted up working families, helped deliver expanded access to health care, and invested in affordable housing,” Pelosi said.
The endorsement is a big one for Jones, who is facing a crowded primary field in his bid to represent New York’s redrawn 10th District.
Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) previously represented the 10th District. But after a chaotic redistricting process significantly altered the district lines, he chose to run instead in the 12th District, putting himself in direct competition with fellow Democratic Rep. Carolyn Maloney (N.Y.).
Jones, meanwhile, opted against running for reelection in his current district because of the new political lines and launched a campaign for the open seat in New York’s 10th District.
One of Jones’s challengers, former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, dropped out of the race last month after struggling to gain traction in the primary. Jones’s other rivals include Trump impeachment lawyer Daniel Goldman, Assemblywoman Yuh-Line Niou and former Rep. Liz Holtzman.
While many of his opponents have touted local endorsements in the race, Jones has racked up the support of national political figures like Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and, now, Pelosi.
New York will hold its congressional primaries on Aug. 23.
Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) didn't make any new friends in the GOP with her star turn bashing former President Trump in prime time on Thursday night. It doesn't bother her a bit.
Cheney, a dynastic figure who sits in the House seat once held by her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, used her high perch on the Jan. 6 select committee to accuse Trump of abusing the powers of the presidency to orchestrate nothing short of an attempted coup — explosive charges that have reinforced her status as Public Enemy No. 1 in the eyes of the MAGA faithful.
The much-watched hearing has further complicated Cheney’s path to reelection in deep-red Wyoming, a Trump stronghold where her primary opponent has the energetic backing of the 45th president, who is actively stumping against the mutinous incumbent.
But as Cheney's attacks on Trump have grown only louder, it's increasingly clear that she's motivated by something other than securing her future in the lower chamber. Whether that thing is a self-sacrificing desire to save the country's democratic traditions from the former president or an egomaniacal effort to advance her own fame and political powers largely depends on the perspective of her fans and critics.
What is not in question is that Cheney has staked her legacy on her relentless anti-Trump activism — a reputation that will become only more deeply entrenched as the select committee airs its investigative findings in a long series of public hearings that will dominate discussion in Washington through the rest of the month.
“President Trump summoned the mob, assembled the mob and lit the flame of this attack,” Cheney, the vice chairwoman of the select committee, said during the panel’s prime-time hearing Thursday night.
For the like-minded Trump critics, Cheney is an enormous asset to the investigation, offering the committee not only a good dose of bipartisan legitimacy, but also a seasoned legal mind who knows the ins and outs of the GOP conference and its complicated dealings with the former president.
“She’s an awesome lawyer, … [and] she was the chair of the House Republican Conference,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), a former professor of constitutional law who also sits on the investigative panel. “So she obviously knows the terrain better than anyone else on the committee.”
To Trump’s allies on and off of Capitol Hill, however, Cheney is simply a traitor to the party — a “Pelosi Republican” who’s been all but disowned as GOP leaders try to tap Trump’s popularity in their effort to flip control of the House in November’s midterm elections.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who wants to take the speakership next year, said this week that the responsibility for the Jan. 6 falls on “everybody in the country.”
In one sense, Cheney is an unlikely figure to assume the role of Republican iconoclast. Her family ranks among the most powerful GOP dynasties of the last half century, and her father's unique brand of conservatism — combined with his no-apologies approach to power-policymaking — made him a favorite with the Republican base.
In a similar vein, Liz Cheney’s staunch conservative positions — including strong attacks on gay marriage during an early campaign — made her a villain in the eyes of Democrats nationwide, but helped propel her quickly into the leadership ranks once she arrived on Capitol Hill in 2017.
In another sense, however, Cheney is the natural fit to play Trump's foil.
Trump had devoted much of his successful 2016 campaign bashing the overseas entanglements of the Bush-Cheney administration, most notably the 2003 decision to launch the Iraq War, which was championed by the elder Cheney. After taking the White House, Trump continued those attacks on the old Republican guard that had pushed an aggressively interventionist foreign policy, a group that included both of the Cheneys.
Although Cheney had opposed Trump’s first impeachment, she was furious with his actions surrounding the attack on the Capitol, where a violent mob of Trump supporters tried to overturn his election defeat. More than 150 police officers were injured in the rampage.
Cheney was one of just 10 Republicans to support Trump’s impeachment following the riot, and she’s jumped headfirst into her role investigating the tragedy. On Thursday, she used the platform of the televised hearing to warn those Republicans still backing Trump that history won’t treat them kindly.
“Tonight, I say this to my Republican colleagues who are defending the indefensible: There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain,” she said.
Supporters of the far-reaching investigation note the significance of having a Republican of Cheney’s stature joining the probe.
“It's important, because like she said, this is not about political parties, or your political views. It's about finding out the truth,” U.S. Capitol Police Sgt. Aquilino Gonell said following the hearing. “And from what the committee laid out today, it seems like there's a lot more that needs to be done.”
But Cheney’s recalcitrance has come with political costs.
Last year, after Cheney refused to stop criticizing Trump for his role in the Capitol riot, the GOP conference voted overwhelmingly to boot her out of leadership, replacing her with a Trump loyalist, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), who has embraced the former president's lies about a stolen election.
More recently, the Republican National Committee voted to condemn Cheney — along with the only other Republican on the select committee, Rep. Adam Kinzinger (Ill.) — for their willingness to join Democrats in the Jan. 6 investigation. That decision, the Republican National Committee charged, “has been destructive to the institution of the U.S. House of Representatives, the Republican Party and our republic.”
In the wake of Thursday’s select committee hearing, the attacks on Cheney from Trump’s allies have grown only more pronounced. During the hearing, Tucker Carlson, the wildly popular Fox News pundit, characterized Cheney as “the Iraq War lady” who’s now “lecturing us about honor and truth.”
Carlson’s guest was Joe Kent, a Trump supporter from Washington state who’s launched a primary challenge against Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-Wash.), who also supported Trump’s second impeachment. He, too, had some sharp words for the Wyoming Republican.
“It's absolutely absurd and insulting,” Kent said of Cheney’s attacks on Trump’s defenders. “She thinks that we can't go back and look at her record that she has been lying to the American people basically for her entire career and profiting off of it, but also she has to bring up this whole, ‘Oh it must be a big Trump thing.’”
Kent said the Capitol rioters were in Washington on Jan. 6 not because of anything Trump did or said, but because “a vast majority” of Americans “did not feel like their voices were heard at the election box, and therefore things started to get a little bit dicey.”
In the face of such attacks, Cheney has found a new group of allies: Democrats, who have always opposed her conservative policy prescriptions, but are now cheering her on as she takes on a shared adversary in Trump.
“Liz Cheney and I do not agree on almost probably 80 percent of the contentious issues that come up, give or take 10 points,” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) told reporters this week. “But what she is standing up for is the truth.”
“That's why she was removed as the leader of the Republican Party,” he continued. “Because the Republican Party didn't want to hear the truth."
The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol attack is hours away from the first of its highly anticipated series of public hearings.
The prime-time hearing kicks off at 8 p.m. on Thursday and will be aired on the big three broadcast networks, ABC, CBS and NBC, as well as cable networks CNN and MSNBC. Fox News announced it will not air the hearing on its main network.
The committee described Thursday’s hearing as an initial summary of a “coordinated, multi-step effort” to overturn the 2020 election results, including previously unseen material and witness testimony.
Here are five things to watch for at tonight’s hearing:
How strongly the committee connects Trump to the riot
Some Democrats have voiced hope that the panel’s findings will amp up pressure on the Justice Department to prosecute former President Trump for his role in the attack.
But exactly how strong the committee connects Trump himself to the riot remains a central question of the panel’s hearings.
But Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), who sits on the panel, said in a Washington Post Live interview on Monday that the committee has found evidence on Trump that supports “a lot more than incitement,” the charge Democrats laid out in their second impeachment trial against Trump.
Raskin said he believed Trump and the White House were at the “center” of Jan. 6.
“The select committee has found evidence about a lot more than incitement here, and we’re gonna be laying out the evidence about all of the actors who were pivotal to what took place on Jan. 6,” Raskin said.
How the committee leverages testimony from Trump’s inner circle
The committee has conducted more than 1,000 interviews in its yearlong investigation, subpoenaed more than 100 people and has promised to share video footage of some of its depositions.
The committee has pledged to air footage from interviews with “Trump White House officials, senior Trump administration officials, Trump campaign officials and indeed Trump family members,” the aide said.
The panel also sat down with a wide range of senior Trump White House officials, including some who were with the former president on Jan. 6.
It has also sat down with former Justice Department officials who spoke about Trump's pressure campaign at the department, as well as with legal advisers to former Vice President Mike Pence.
The committee has also interviewed multiple Trump family members, including Donald Trump Jr., the president’s son; his fiancee, Kimberly Guilfoyle; Ivanka Trump, the president’s eldest daughter; and her husband, Jared Kushner.
Those videotaped testimonies will be part of a multimedia presentation. The committee hired a veteran ABC producer to assist with assembling the videos as it looks to transform its evidence into a ready-for-TV package.
How organized groups played a role in spurring violence
Among the thousands of people who traveled to Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6 were extremist groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers. Dozens of these groups’ members have been charged in connection with the riot.
The role of the Proud Boys is expected to come into particular focus on Thursday when documentarian Nick Quested appears as a witness.
Quested filmed footage of Proud Boys members during the Capitol breach and a Jan. 5 meeting between the leaders of the two extremist groups.
The committee also subpoenaed people affiliated with the “Stop the Steal” movement, with one organizer having said the group intended to direct Ellipse rally attendees to a subsequent event on Capitol grounds.
How the committee looks ahead to future elections
Perceptions of the committee’s end goal are varied among lawmakers. Some Democrats hope the hearings will provide a high-stakes history lesson for the public, while others desire greater accountability for the riot’s central players.
As Democrats weigh their options, the panel itself has reportedly become divided about what long-term reforms to implement.
Axios reported on Sunday that Raskin has argued for abolishing the Electoral College to prevent future subversion of the electoral counting process. But Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), the panel’s vice chair, has voiced opposition to that proposal out of concerns it would diminish the committee’s credibility, according to the outlet.
Axios reported that other committee members have pushed more modest reforms, like changes to the Electoral Count Act and federal voting rights legislation.
How Republicans combat the hearing’s messaging
The panel scheduled its first hearing for prime time in attempts to cut through to large swaths of the American public, but the committee is already facing headwinds.
Fox News announced it will not air the hearing on its cable channel, although its lower-profile sister network Fox Business will do so. Prominent Fox News host Tucker Carlson will host his show at 8 p.m. on Thursday just as the hearing begins.
The GOP is arguing the hearings are just meant to distract voters from issues like inflation and crime. The House Committee on Administration Republicans sent a letter to the Jan. 6 panel asking it to preserve all records in preparation for an investigation of the investigation.
At House Republican leadership’s press conference earlier on Thursday, just one of nine attending lawmakers said they would tune in to Thursday’s hearing: Rep. Kelly Armstrong (N.D.).
The House committee probing the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection will start holding public hearings Thursday, looking to draw national attention to witness testimony and evidence gathered during nearly a year of investigating.
The committee is made up of nine House members — seven Democrats and two Republicans. It formed last summer, about six months after the U.S. Capitol riot, to investigate the attack and events and communications around it.
After an attempt to form a bipartisan commission with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) failed, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) moved forward in appointing the entire committee.
Here are the members serving on the House Jan. 6 committee and some of their comments on the panel's work thus far.
Bennie Thompson
Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) serves as chairman of the committee. Thompson has led the committee since its inception. He has said there is “no question” that the Jan. 6 insurrection was a premeditated attack based on the evidence the committee has received.
He has called his role leading the committee “ironic” given his background as a Black man from “one of the most racist states.”
Liz Cheney
Rep. Liz Cheney (Wyo.) serves as the vice chairwoman and is one of two Republican members on the committee. Thompson said in September that her appointment underscores the “bipartisan nature” of the committee’s work.
But Cheney has faced sharp criticism as a result of her decision to participate in the committee’s investigation and her rebukes of former President Trump’s claims of fraud in the 2020 presidential election. House Republicans voted to remove Cheney as conference chairwoman last May, and she is now facing a Trump-endorsed challenger for her primary in August.
Cheney said last month hat Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election results is a "threat we have never faced before."
Adam Kinzinger
Rep. Adam Kinzinger (Ill.), the other Republican serving on the committee, has also faced pushback after he voted to impeach Trump for his role in inciting the Capitol insurrection and joined the Jan. 6 committee. Kinzinger announced in October that he would not seek reelection to his seat, ending a 12-year career in the House. He has remained one of the most vocal GOP critics of Trump.
Kinzinger was not originally a member of the committee, but Pelosi appointed him after McCarthy pulled his picks from consideration.
McCarthy denied blaming Trump for the insurrection immediately following the attack, but tapes later revealed that he did, which Kinzinger said showed that Republican leaders think their voters are “dumb.”
Pete Aguilar
Rep. Pete Aguilar (Calif.), the vice chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, argued in March in favor of the Justice Department bringing contempt charges against witnesses who have refused to cooperate despite subpoenas from the committee.
The Justice Department has brought charges for contempt of Congress against former Trump strategist Stephen Bannon and former trade adviser Peter Navarro but has not charged his former chief of staff Mark Meadows or Dan Scavino, his former deputy chief of staff for communications, who have also been subpoenaed by the committee.
Zoe Lofgren
Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), chairwoman of the House Administration Committee, said in March on PBS’s “NewsHour” that what unfolded during the riot was a more serious threat to American democracy than Watergate. In April, she said the members of the House Jan. 6 committee are “not afraid” to release any information or call any witness to testify.
The committee has issued subpoenas for a range of witnesses, including Reps. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) and Scott Perry (R-Pa.) and Kimberly Guilfoyle, the girlfriend of Donald Trump Jr. who spoke at the Jan. 6 rally at the Ellipse near the White House. Multiple family members have voluntarily cooperated, including the former president's daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner.
The committee has not said who will testify during its upcoming slate of eight hearings.
Elaine Luria
Rep. Elaine Luria (D-Va.) said in an interview in late March that Kushner’s interview with the committee was “really valuable” to the investigation.
Luria also called on Attorney General Merrick Garland to act on the contempt charges the committee has recommended.
“Attorney General Garland, do your job so we can do ours,” she said at a meeting where the committee forwarded its recommendation for charges against Scavino and Navarro.
Stephanie Murphy
Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-Fla.) said in February that the committee needs to be aware of the impact its actions could have moving forward.
“The people who were involved were at all levels of government — local, state and federal — and the unprecedented nature of the event has led us to be very careful about how we proceed in the investigation because we are setting precedents,” Murphy told The Hill at the time.
“But we will be thorough in how we get all the information,” she added.
Jamie Raskin
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), who led the House impeachment case against Trump in January, has been vocal about the Jan. 6 committee’s findings and what the American people will learn from the public hearings.
He said Monday that the committee members have found evidence on Trump that is “a lot more than incitement.” Trump was impeached following the insurrection for incitement, but the Senate did not reach the requisite two-thirds majority vote needed to convict him.
Raskin told Washington Post Live on Tuesday that the hearing this week will “tell a story of a conspiracy to overturn the 2020 presidential election.”
Adam Schiff
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) emphasized on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday that the hearing this week will be the first time there will be a “comprehensive narrative” on the events surrounding the insurrection.
He said “a number of bombshells” have already been released during the committee’s investigation but that there is more to be revealed. Schiff is the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, which was at the center of the investigation in Trump's first impeachment for allegedly soliciting foreign help in an election.
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) on Monday said the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol has found evidence on former President Trump that supports “a lot more than incitement.”
The Jan. 6 panel is set to hold its first public hearing on Thursday, where Raskin said the committee will lay out information regarding individuals who played a role in the attack — including Trump.
“The select committee has found evidence about a lot more than incitement here, and we’re gonna be laying out the evidence about all of the actors who were pivotal to what took place on Jan. 6,” Raskin said during an interview with Washington Post Live.
Trump was impeached in the House by a 232-197 vote, with 10 Republicans joining all Democrats in sanctioning the president. The following month, however, the Senate acquitted him in a 57-43 vote. Seven Senate Republicans joined the entire Democratic caucus in voting to convict.
The select committee says Thursday’s prime-time hearing, scheduled to begin at 8 p.m., will feature new material and witness testimony from the nearly yearlong investigation, which has largely been conducted behind the scenes
Raskin on Monday told The Washington Post Live that this week’s hearing will “tell the story of a conspiracy to overturn the 2020 presidential election and block the transfer of power.”
Asked if Trump is at the center of that conspiracy, Raskin said “I think that Donald Trump and the White House were at the center of these events.”
“That’s the only way really of making sense of them all,” he added.
He noted, however, that "people are going to have to make judgments themselves about the relative role that different people played."
The Maryland Democrat then pointed to Trump’s second impeachment, in which Raskin was the lead manager of the Senate trial.
“Of course the House and the Senate in bicameral and bipartisan fashion have already determined that the former president, Donald Trump, incited an insurrection by majority votes in the House and the Senate,” Raskin said.
“Although, Donald Trump wasn’t convicted by the requisite two-thirds majority, but commanding majority found that he had in fact incited this insurrection,” he added.
The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol is preparing for a crucial week as it prepares to finally share with the public the fruits of its months-long investigation into the riot in prime time on Thursday.
The 8 p.m. hearing kicking off a series of meetings shows the committee is eager to reach a broad segment of Americans and relay the extent to which democracy itself was at stake that day.
“The goal here is to construct this narrative,” said Molly Reynolds, a senior fellow in governance studies with Brookings.
“What they want to do is go through the countless depositions that they've taken and other evidence that they gathered and figure out a way to try and convey a story to the public.”
The challenge is making a captivating case for a wide audience, particularly those who feel they already know what happened that day or who are ready to move on from the attack.
According to polling from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, the country is nearly evenly divided on how much it wants to reflect on the day.
While 52 percent said it’s important to learn more about what happened, 48 percent said it was “time to move on.” The divide is almost entirely partisan.
“I do think that the committee will have difficulties in communicating messages because of the kind of segregated information environment in which a lot of the American public exists,” Ryan Goodman, co-director of the Reiss Center on Law and Security at New York University School of Law, told The Hill.
“That said, I do think the visual of a solemn public hearing and live testimony plus, in all likelihood video material, could focus attention in a way [for] the members of the American public are otherwise not thinking about these issues.”
Putting the hearing in prime-time shows the committee doesn’t want to just reach those who already view the attack as a grievous assault on democracy. It wants to reach independents and even conservatives who have heard GOP leaders brand the panel as a partisan witch hunt.
Jesse Rhodes, a political science professor who helped craft the UMass poll, said even with the sharp partisan divide, there are those who don’t have strong feelings about the attack.
“We're finding in the poll that about 19 percent of people are purely independent. And then there's another 9 percent who lean Democratic and another 8 percent lean Republican. So there is a little bit of mushiness in the middle. And those people potentially can be shifted,” he said, noting that just one-third of Americans strongly identify as conservative.
“If there really is damning evidence of long-term planning, involvement in collusion by the president or his top advisers … that does have the potential to move some people.”
Rhodes and others have warned the committee must be careful in how it frames such messaging.
“I think the most important [thing] might be this is not perceived as a Trump versus Biden frame, which the first impeachment hearing pretty much was, but rather it imparts a Trump versus Pence framework. I think that there are many people that are concerned about the direct threat to Mike Pence that occurred on Jan. 6,” Goodman said.
“I think that captures attention in a very different way. It’s not as political or partisan.”
There are signs the committee could be leaning in that direction. Multiple outlets reported the panel has been in discussions about inviting Pence’s legal advisers and chief of staff to testify.
“As soon as this is perceived as or appears to be a strictly partisan affair and an attack on the Republican Party as an institution, then you're going to get a lot of resistance or skepticism,” Rhodes said.
“To the degree that the messages can be about upholding and maintaining institutions and values that benefit people, regardless of party, the more you will get at least a willingness to hear some of these concerns.”
The panel’s makeup could help it.
Republicans in the House objected during the two committee impeachment proceedings on Trump, but the two Republicans on the Jan. 6 panel agree with its objectives.
“Each hearing is going to be different than I think a lot of what we're used to seeing because everyone is rowing in the same direction. So you have the Democrats and you have [Rep. Liz] Cheney [R-Wyo.] and [Rep. Adam] Kinzinger [R-Ill.], so the committee is bipartisan, but they are all in pursuit of a shared goal in a way that just is not true of other recent high profile investigations, whether it be the Trump impeachment or Benghazi,” Reynolds said.
“That’s going to make for a serious exposition of the facts that's just going to feel different than what we’ve gotten used to.”
Goodman said the absence of Republicans opposed to the committee’s mission will not just change the tone but even the way in which information is presented.
“I do not think that the hearings are going to be anything like the circus that has existed in hearings — and the impeachment hearings — in that past in which some members of Congress were simply playing to kind of a right-wing media. And so this will be a more solemn hearing which is going to be truth seeking, [that’s] the way in which I see it. And I don't think that hearings are going to be a source of disinformation. I think they're going to be a source of information,” he said.
The committee has not yet announced who will testify at the first hearing, but it has pledged to release never before seen footage from Jan. 6.
“The committee will present previously unseen material documenting January 6th, receive witness testimony, preview additional hearings, and provide the American people a summary of its findings about the coordinated, multi-step effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and prevent the transfer of power,” it said in a Thursday statement.
It’s not clear what type of footage the committee plans to present at the hearing.
While in the past it’s relied on visceral imagery — including an officer being smashed by rioters in a doorway and Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) barely escaping as the mob closed in on the Senate chamber — even new footage of the attack may seem repetitive to those who watched it unfold live on television.
But Goodman said video recordings from some of the committee’s more than 1,000 depositions could be captivating for the public.
Rhodes also said new information will be key, especially to break through in an unusually busy summer news cycle.
“It can be a challenge to get people to refocus on events that occurred in the past, especially when there's going to be a lot of elite disagreement between Democrats and Republicans about what happened and who was involved in with what culpability,” he said. “I think that's a real challenge even though it sounds like the committee is going to have a lot of really juicy and damning information to share.”
“They may be able to bring attention especially if they come out with some really shocking new revelations but it is going to be a challenge to break through everything that's going on right now.”
Businessman and former GOP New York gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino is set to jump into the race to represent New York’s 23rd District with the backing of House Republican Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.).
Paladino confirmed to The Hill Friday evening that he is running for the seat, saying that he heard that there were a few people thinking of running that he did not respect, but he did not name names.
“Representing the people of Western New York would be a great honor, and I think I could be most effective at doing that,” Paladino said.
The dust had barely settled after Rep. Chris Jacobs (R-N.Y.) abruptly ended his reelection bid on Friday over backlash to his support for an assault weapons ban when Stefanik came out with the endorsement.
According to The Buffalo News, Paladino said earlier Friday that if Jacobs dropped out that he would throw his hat in the ring for the seat.
“Carl is a job creator and conservative outsider who will be a tireless fighter for the people of New York in our fight to put America First to save the country,” Stefanik said in a tweet posted on Friday evening.
Paladino said that Stefanik asked if he would mind if she endorsed him as soon as she heard he was running.
“She's a great girl,” Paladino said. “She’s got she got her head right where it belongs when it comes to leading for her people,”
Paladino, a real estate developer and ally of former President Trump, made national headlines in December 2016 when he sent racist remarks about former President Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama to local Buffalo, N.Y., outlet Artvoice.
He claimed at the time that he sent the comments in error.
He said that he would like to see Michelle Obama “return to being a male and let loose in the outback of Zimbabwe where she lives comfortably in a cave with Maxie, the gorilla.” Paladino added that he hoped President Obama would die of mad cow disease. Paladino apologized to “the minority community” for his comments.
At the time, Paladino sat on the Buffalo city school board. In August 2017, he was removed from that position after he was accused of improperly disclosing information about teacher contract negotiations.
Before that, Paladino was the Republican nominee for New York Governor in 2010.
Stefanik has since come to publicly and forcefully support Trump, including by being part of his impeachment defense team during the first impeachment proceedings against him in 2019.
Former House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) will campaign for Rep. Tom Rice (R-S.C.), one of the 10 Republicans who voted to impeach former President Trump in the aftermath of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack.
“Tom Rice is a man of principle, a man of conviction, and a leader who always puts South Carolina’s interests first. He is a legislative workhorse with a long track-record of supporting policies that grow the economy, rein in out-of-control spending, and expand opportunities for families and businesses,” Ryan said in a statement.
“Tom is a tireless and effective advocate for South Carolina. He will make a big impact when Republicans retake the House majority in 2022 and I’m looking forward to traveling around the 7th district with him.”
Ryan will appear at a luncheon for Rice in Florence, S.C., on Wednesday.
Rice, an accountant who has spent a decade in Congress, took Ryan’s spot on the powerful House Ways and Means Committee after Ryan became Speaker in 2015. He is now ranking member on the committee’s Oversight Subcommittee.
His vote to impeach Trump came as a surprise to most political observers.
"I have backed this President through thick and thin for four years. I campaigned for him and voted for him twice. But, this utter failure is inexcusable," Rice said in a statement following the impeachment vote.
Trump endorsed South Carolina state Rep. Russell Fry in the primary against Rice, touting him as a “leading fighter on Election Integrity.”
Rice, Trump said while endorsing Fry, “abandoned his constituents by caving to Nancy Pelosi and the Radical Left” and “actually voted against me on Impeachment Hoax #2.”
Five other GOP candidates are running in Rice’s primary.
Rice has led the field of candidates in fundraising, closing the first quarter of the year in March with nearly $2 million in cash on hand. All other candidates had less than a half million dollars at that time.
But an internal poll from Fry’s campaign from early May found Fry leading Rice 39 percent to 23 percent among likely GOP primary voters.
South Carolina’s primaries are scheduled for June 14.