What the Jan. 6 Committee Needs to Ask in the Big Finale
The Jan. 6 Committee, in its seventh hearing on Tuesday, revealed the underbelly of a violent extremist movement—which had been aided and abetted by Donald Trump’s allies, and egged-on by the former president in his attempt to stay in office.
Today’s hearings showed that—having exhausted bogus legal appeals after losing the 2020 election to Joe Biden—Trump convened a December 18 meeting in the Oval Office that ended after midnight in a flurry of profane shouting between the outside “crazies” and the inside White House lawyers. Upon concluding that unhinged meeting, at 1:42am, Trump tweeted about the planned protests on Jan. 6: “Be there. It will be wild.”
That was the call to arms that summoned the mob to Washington—more evidence of how (in committee vice-chair Rep. Liz Cheney’s telling) Trump was “substantially and personally” involved every step of the way in the events that led to the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Cheney also promised that next week’s (supposedly) final hearing will feature a witness we have not yet heard from—who refused to take a phone call from the former president, then told their lawyer about it, who then told the Jan. 6 Committee, who told the Justice Department.