Jan 6: Congressional Hearings vs Criminal Trials
Jan 6: Congressional Hearings vs Criminal Trials
Bennie Thompson and Merrick Garland have different jobs and goals
Issue #88 OpEd July 22, 2022 (about 4 minutes reading time)
The latest hearing of the Jan 6th Committee
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On Thursday, July 21, 2022, the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol presented its 8th public and televised hearing. This latest hearing was the last of what many people are calling “Season 1.” The Committee stated that it would be back in September with more hearings, essentially, “Season 2.”
You can watch the entire two-hour hearing here.
The hearings have greatly expanded our understanding of the Jan 6th attack itself, but also about many of the related incidents that led up to that day. By the latest hearing, the attack and everything leading up to it has been placed directly in the lap of Donald J. Trump.
Nearly all of the witnesses were Republicans and many previously worked in the Trump administration. The lone exceptions were Shaye Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman, two election workers from Georgia who were viciously attacked and targeted by Trump supporters as a direct result of falsehoods spread by the former president and Rudy Giuliani, and some of the Capitol Police officers whose political leanings were not disclosed.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) masterfully rejected the Republicans that House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) tried to appoint to the Committee, knowing that his picks would have turned the hearings into a political circus. When he didn’t get his preferred people onto the Committee, McCarthy decided to pull his choices out of the running, thinking that would show that the Committee was a Democrat-led “illegitimate” body just out to get Trump.
So Speaker Pelosi invited two Republicans, Liz Cheney (R-WY) and Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) to join the Committee, which they did, risking their political and personal lives to do so. Liz Cheney is the co-chair of the Committee, which can now be called “bipartisan.”
For more comprehensive discussions about the latest hearing, I recommend that you read Substack articles by Professor of History Heather Cox Richardson and former journalist Dan Rather. I am including links here.
Lock Him Up!
After viewing the hearings, many are pressuring Attorney General Merrick Garland to immediately indict Trump for all kinds of illegal activities. People are wondering what is taking the AG so long.
The problem with putting so much pressure on the AG and on the Department of Justice (DOJ) is that Congressional hearings are very different from criminal indictments and trials.
Congressional committees have no power to indict or to bring any kind of criminal accusations to people. The committees can only make recommendations. It is up to the DOJ to bring criminal charges to anyone.
I’ve been a fan of court-room TV shows since I watched the original “Perry Mason” in black-and-white at my grandmother’s house when I was a child. I have practically memorized every episode of all versions of the “Law and Order” franchise.
Since I am an experienced armchair lawyer, I can tell that the hearings are quite different from courtroom proceedings. The tightly choreographed hearings, with their videos and pre-taped depositions, allow the Committee members to ask what would be termed as ‘leading questions,’ and many of the responses were either 2nd- or 3rd-hand or what would be classified as ‘hearsay.’
That’s not how courtroom trials work.
AG Garland’s job is quite different from Chairman Bennie Thompson’s job. The Attorney General is essentially a prosecuting district attorney; he is the country’s Jack McCoy.
Garland and the DOJ are quietly and privately building a case for a very complicated and unheard-of path to the indictment of a former president of the United States. Throughout American history, there have been presidential scandals like the Teapot Dome scandal of President Warren G. Harding, the Iran-Contra scandal of President Ronald Reagan, and of course, the Watergate scandal of President Richard M. Nixon. All of these scandal-ridden presidents were members of the Republican party. As bad as those scandals were, none of them put our very republic in danger of being toppled by a coup or involved the deaths of police officers and others and the near deaths of several elected government officials.
A quick reminder that Merrick Garland has a lot of experience bringing domestic terrorists to trial and conviction. He was in charge of trying and convicting the Oklahoma City bombers, the Unabomber, and the Atlanta Olympic bomber, among others.
In each case, the preparations leading up to the convictions for those people had no leaks, were conducted in private, and led to convictions that were not overturned on appeal. That is very important to remember.
Merrick Garland has only one chance to get this right. It only starts with an indictment, which is essentially an accusation. After the formal indictment in a specific jurisdiction (probably Washington, D.C.), there will next be a trial.
During that trial there will be another chance for witnesses to testify, but this time witnesses will be subject to cross-examination.
Then, if the jury votes to convict, the defendant - yes, even Donald J. Trump - has the right to try to appeal for the conviction to be overturned. The appeal could go all the way up to the Supreme Court. None of Garland’s previous convictions of this type have ever been overturned on appeal. He is working for the same outcome for this process.
And this is a very long process. Everything that the DOJ has been doing so far is not known to most of those outside of the DOJ staff.
Merrick Garland has repeatedly said that no one is above the law, not even a former president. He is also being very careful to not be seen as ultra-political or put the DOJ in a position of influencing the midterm elections.
I think that if Garland at least brings the indictment, many of the naysayers will be partially satisfied as the rest of the process plays out.
So I hope that people recognize that Garland and the DOJ have a very big job to do and that pressuring them to go faster just to appease us is not the right thing to do. We have to respect the process, as hard as that is.
But I also want to remind people that if the Republicans regain control of the House they will not only end the investigations but also try to “impeach” Garland, Biden, Harris, and any other Democrat they feel is blocking their path toward total authoritarianism and complete minority power over the rest of us.
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