As the Jan. 6 committee gears up for its first public hearing Thursday, former President Donald Trump’s most vocal allies in the House are launching their countermessaging efforts in a push to paint the panel as illegitimate.
GOP critics of the panel, which is composed of seven Democrats and two “Never Trump” Republicans, have long blasted it as a “partisan witch hunt.” They have repeatedly slammed Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) decision to reject Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s (R-CA) selection of Reps. Jim Banks (R-IN) and Jim Jordan (R-OH) to the committee, which is tasked with investigating the deadly attack on the Capitol.
The committee’s announcement of the prime-time hearing stated it would feature “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,” with U.S. Capitol Police Officer Caroline Edwards and documentary filmmaker Nick Quested slated to testify.
In a call with reporters Tuesday, House Republican Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik (R-NY), Jordan, Banks, and Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA) asserted that conservative lawmakers have no plans of remaining silent ahead of the hearings, which are slated to be aired on multiple major networks.
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“This week, the House Republican Conference, working with all of our members, will be setting the record straight and telling the truth to the American people — sharing the facts and also pointing out how unprecedented and unconstitutional and illegitimate this committee is,” Stefanik said.
Members of the committee, led by Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-MS) and Vice Chairwoman Liz Cheney (R-WY), have dismissed GOP critics’ accusations that it is politically motivated, insisting that they are looking to uncover the truth about what led to the deadly siege.
Stefanik and Jordan both took aim at the committee’s decision to bring on former ABC News executive James Goldston to produce the hearings.
“Democrats have hired the former president of ABC News to produce a partisan documentary, and their first witness is going to be a documentarian. We got that news today,” Jordan said. “The goal, it seems to me, is to end the Electoral College because they’ve said — Mr. Raskin has said that and to make sure that they try to make sure that President Trump will not run for president and cannot get elected to that office.”
Stefanik went so far as attempting to paint Goldston as a Jeffrey Epstein sympathizer while taking aim at the committee.
“Just this week, we learned that Nancy Pelosi’s illegitimate sham Jan. 6 witch hunt secretly hired the former president of ABC News to be the producer for their shameless prime-time hearing,” she continued.
“This is the same producer who prevented his own network from airing interviews with Jeff Epstein’s victims. Shameful. It is absolutely shameful that the Democrats would hire someone who was complicit in the cover-up for Jeff Epstein,” Stefanik said. “And this further solidifies what we have known from day one: that this committee is not about seeking the truth. It is a witch hunt to smear their political opponents.”
Perry — one of the five GOP lawmakers subpoenaed by the committee, along with Jordan, McCarthy, and Reps. Mo Brooks of Alabama and Andy Biggs of Arizona — alleged that Democrats have opted not to answer Republicans’ questions about security failures that allowed for the campus to be breached, attempting to place some of the blame on Pelosi.
“On Jan. 7, on the House floor, I asked what did Speaker Pelosi know and when did she know it. And of course, we’ve never been able to ask that question,” he said. “And I suspect that question will never be asked. There is culpability here because the speaker is responsible for the security of the Capitol.”
Banks asserted that the GOP-led investigation he has overseen plans to release a report on findings pertaining to shortcomings on safety measures ahead of the attack, which he argues the select committee has not placed a heavy enough emphasis on.
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“I assure you, as we continue to put the finishing touches on our own report, again, we don’t have subpoena authority. … We don’t have staff resources, we don’t have committee jurisdiction, but we still went to work to dig into [security] questions,” he said. “[We] interviewed a number of Capitol police officers, whistleblowers, and others related to the security at the Capitol that day to formulate our own report, which we will come out with, that will be far more substantive than anything that you will see on prime-time TV this week.”
