Why the Jan. 6 committee needs to 'lay the foundation' before making testimonial requests

(Image credit: AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

published 9 October 2021

The "smartest" strategy for the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot is not a particularly complicated one, Politico reports.

Norm Eisen, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who advised the House Judiciary Committee during the first impeachment of former President Donald Trump, told Politico that "to get at the truth" of what really happened on Jan. 6, the select committee "is going to need to selectively, carefully, and precisely target the testimony, documents, and other evidence" of some GOP lawmakers who are staunch allies of Trump and may have had discussions with him leading up to and on the day of the riot.

The committee must first "lay the foundation" for their case, Eisen said, because "you know that every one of those document requests, much less testimonial requests, are going to be hotly contested" with "lawyers for these potentially culpable members ... scrutinizing potential legal arguments to make." Eisen thinks investigators should be specific with their requests, tailoring them to lawmakers who had direct contact with Trump and other important players in the events surrounding the riot and the quest to overturn the 2020 election. Read more at Politico.

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Tim is a staff writer at The Week and has contributed to Bedford and Bowery and The New York Transatlantic. He is a graduate of Occidental College and NYU's journalism school. Tim enjoys writing about baseball, Europe, and extinct megafauna. He lives in New York City.

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