THE HOUSE COMMITTEE’S GRAND UNIFIED THEORY OF JAN. 6. You knew something was up when the leaks about the House Democrats’ Jan. 6 committee began to change. A month ago, committee member Rep. Jamie Raskin said the committee’s hearings would “blow the roof off the House.” The weeks that followed were filled with hype about the first hearing, which would be held in prime time for maximum television exposure and would be produced with showbiz expertise by a former president of ABC News.
And then came the downplaying. In an article published just hours before the hearing began, the Washington Post reported, “Committee aides sought to temper expectations of any shocking revelations during Thursday’s hearing and instead framed the session as an opening argument.” The paper quoted an anonymous committee aide saying, “A lot of this has been reported and bits and pieces of it have been shared. Our aim is to tie all that together in a comprehensive narrative.”
