Rep. Liz Cheney, one of just two Republicans on the House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection, has asserted that the attack was part of an "extremely well-organized" conspiracy.
The Wyoming lawmaker's comments to CBS "Sunday Morning" come before the panel is set to hold its first public hearing on June 9 at 8 p.m. ET. The prime-time presentation will be an overview of the committee's 10-month investigation and set the stage for subsequent hearings, which are expected to cover certain topics or themes, sources previously told CNN.
"It is extremely broad. It's extremely well organized. It's really chilling," Cheney told the outlet when asked if the attack amounted to a conspiracy, adding: "I have not learned anything that has made me less concerned."
A piece at Salon looks further at the coming public hearings which have Trump and his acolytes sufficiently concerned that they have planned "alternate programming" in the hope of keeping sane Republicans - to the extent they still exist from tuning into the hearings. Here are highlights:
The long-awaited public hearings for the House select committee on the Jan. 6 insurrection have finally been scheduled. The first one is set for next Thursday, June 9, in prime time. The committee previewed its plans this week, announcing on Thursday that it will "present previously 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." Committee leaders seem to be carefully choreographing the event, even drawing out the suspense by not naming the witnesses until next week.
The hearings, said Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., will "tell a story that will blow the roof off the House." We can only hope that is not unjustified hyperbole. These hearings will be the most important public record of an attempted coup, and the whole country should be watching.
What we have already seen is a lot, such as the voluminous text messages from various Republicans and journalists to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows during the insurrection itself. There has been leaked testimony from major players inside the Department of Justice and Donald Trump's White House, as well as information from Trump's legal advisers and various state officials.
Donald Trump and his allies tried to overturn a legal election with a series of plots that culminated in the violent insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021. But no one has put together the whole story for the American people such that they can understand just how unprecedented and dangerous these schemes were — and how close we came to a serious constitutional crisis.
The committee is promising previously unseen material, and one hopes it will add something new to the narrative. It also seems that the committee has put together a professional multimedia presentation, since in this day and age you can't bore the TV audience. But the most important element of these hearings will be witness testimony.
Expert testimony is always important in hearings like this, where you're trying to educate the public about complex issues. Axios reported this week that the committee plans to call former federal judge J. Michael Luttig, a conservative Republican who was shortlisted more than once for a Supreme Court seat. Luttig advised Vice President Mike Pence on the legality or illegality of overturning the 2020 electoral results.
Luttig went much further in his analysis of the situation, and this something the greater public needs to understand:
Trump's and the Republicans' far more ambitious objective is to execute successfully in 2024 the very same plan they failed in executing in 2020 and to overturn the 2024 election if Trump or his anointed successor loses again in the next quadrennial contest. The last presidential election was a dry run for the next.
Luttig is not a liberal or a Democrat. But he also isn't delusional and isn't a coward, which makes him something of a unicorn in Republican circles. His testimony should be very compelling.
And apparently, as former Republican congressman Denver Riggleman, now an investigator for the select committee, told Anderson Cooper, the text messages during the post-election period prior to that day were downright chilling:
Riggleman calls Meadows the "MVP" for all the information he provided and one of Meadows' aides, Cassidy Hutchinson, testified several times before the committee and appears to have shared other vitally important information. It's not clear whether Hutchinson will testify in the televised hearings but if she does, it's clear she has a story to tell.
Whatever happens in these hearings, we can be sure that they will be different than other such congressional spectacles you may have watched in recent years, and not just because of the extraordinary subject matter. For the first time in recent memory, we will see a Capitol Hill hearing without even one obnoxious Republican grandstander seeking to derail the whole thing. We can expect that this committee will be serious and focused, which is something we have not seen in this kind of setting for a long time.
Republican leaders are obviously worried that some of their troops might tune in and see something that will shake their faith in the Big Lie so they are plotting to "counter-program" the hearings. Axios reported on Thursday that the GOP will deploy everyone from House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy to — maybe — Donald Trump himself across Fox News, Steve Bannon's "War Room," "Real America's Voice," Facebook and Trump's own Truth Social platform to ensure the base doesn't lose their religion.
They plan to portray the Democrats as out of touch with average Americans, with one aide telling Axios, "We've got to be rigid and responsible, but a lot of Republicans think if Dems want to just talk about Jan. 6 between now and the midterm election — good luck." If that's what they think, they might want to have a chat with their Dear Leader, who can't shut up about the Big Lie that's at the heart of this entire crisis. If any one individual in America is keeping Jan. 6 alive as a political issue, it's Donald Trump.
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