The First Reality-Based Congressional Oversight Hearing in Years
The First Reality-Based Congressional Oversight Hearing in Years
Jim Jordan’s absence allowed the Jan. 6 House select committee to actually do its job.
By Jeremy Stahl
July 27, 20214:33 PM
On Tuesday, the House select committee investigating the insurrection of Jan. 6 held its first hearing. Four police officers who came under assault that day acted as opening witnesses, delivering testimony so powerful that even Republican opponents of the committee had to admit it was “compelling and gut-wrenching.”
snip//
The testimony was punctuated by sober and at times incisive questioning from members of the committee, including from Republican Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, who are the only GOP members on the panel. (House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy declined to seat others after two of his selections, Jim Jordan and Jim Banks, were rejected by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi due to their past statements undermining the significance of the attack.) During the hearing, one couldn’t help but wonder what those rejected committee members might have said in response to the brutal testimony from the officers. At the same time, because they were not there, it was actually possible for everyone assembled to focus on the horrific stories that Dunn, Hodges, Gonell, and Fanone were sharing. There was no deranged counternarrative being interjected every five minutes.
Indeed, after 3½ years of covering Democratic oversight efforts since Democrats took back control of the House majority at the start of 2019, I can honestly say that this is the first and only time I can remember witnessing a hearing into misconduct perpetrated by Trump and his minions that maintained its presence in objective reality the whole time. (While the House Intelligence Committee’s hearings during Donald Trump’s first impeachment were illuminating and powerful, they were consistently derailed by partisan nonsense.)
Instead of the usual circus, Tuesday’s hearing was four consecutive hours of clean fact-finding and emotionally constructive first-person witnessing to the horrors of Jan. 6. This was possible only because Jordan (and to a lesser extent Banks) was kept off of the panel. Jordan has previously found enormous success as an oversight arsonist on the House Judiciary Committee and the House Oversight Committee, and on the House Intelligence Committee during impeachment. I know Jordan would have derailed any fact-finding effort into Jan. 6 because he already announced how he would have done it had he been allowed to participate during a press conference with Republican House leadership on the Capitol steps on Tuesday.
more...
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/07/january-six-hearing-no-jim-jordan.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
