Four possible consequences of the Capitol riot hearing
Donald Trump and his aides could face jail, but analysts suggest the investigation may have little effect

Washington is abuzz with speculation as the House Select Committee to Investigate the 6 January attack on the US Capitol held its first public hearing in nearly a year.
The congressional investigation is looking into the potential culpability of former president Donald Trump and other senior Republicans for the violent insurrection following the election of President Biden in 2020.
The first of two scheduled hearings took place yesterday, with another due on Monday, and others are likely to follow throughout the summer.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Yesterday’s proceedings opened with a series of videos featuring Trump aides testifying that his claims of a stolen election were false. The panel “laid out in meticulous detail the extent of the former president’s efforts to keep himself in office,” The New York Times (NYT) reported.
There is fevered expectation as to what the House select committee might hear and what the consequences might be for those involved, not least the former president himself.
Jail or fines for Trump
The most serious penalty the former president could face is a jail term, but that is unlikely.
Trump and many of his former associates have so far refused to collaborate with the hearing, creating a dilemma for investigators.
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
The House select committee has the power to “imprison or fine any person for defying a subpoena for documents or testimony”, Bruce Fein, who was associate deputy attorney general under President Reagan, wrote for The Hill. Yet so far it has declined to deploy those powers, which Fein said is “inexplicable” and exhibits a “cowardliness (that) will not save the country”.
Consequently, those hoping to see Trump behind bars may be disappointed by the hearing’s refusal to “play its unused trump cards”.
The midterms
The hearings are unfolding as both major parties hold their primary polls five months before the 2022 midterm elections, in which the Democrats’ slender majority is at stake.
Joe Biden’s party holds the narrowest of majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, so any political miscalculation could hobble the second half of his four-year term. The Senate is now tied with 50 members for each party and the Democrats holding the tie-breaker in Vice-President Kamala Harris. In the House, a swing in just half a dozen seats could tip control from Democrats to Republicans.
“How this plays out in the primaries is really hard to say because this news can break both ways,” Patrick Egan, associate professor of politics and public policy at New York University, told USA Today.
Kurt Braddock, an assistant professor of public communication at American University, agreed, saying the impact of the hearings may end up being negligible on the midterms because Trump supporters tend to explain away criticisms levelled at him.
“Individuals who are kind of the die-hard Trump supporters, they almost see him as a reduction sauce of what they want to support and they don’t see that same level in those that he endorses,” Braddock said.
The Trump clan
The ordinarily tight Trump family has shown signs of strain over the past year and a half. In the hours and days after polls closed in 2020, his daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner “were already washing their hands of the Trump presidency”.
According to the NYT, barely 24 hours after Trump claimed in the middle of the night that “frankly, we did win this election”, the “power couple” who had spent the previous four years building the foundations of political careers of their own in Washington made the snap decision to leave town. “We’re moving to Miami,” Kushner told his wife.
Now, they are “silently renouncing Trump”, New York magazine says. “In the most Javanka-y move imaginable, they are now distancing themselves from the last three months of the Trump administration, suggesting via an anonymously sourced news report that they always knew that whole insurrection business was wrong, but there was simply nothing they could do.”
Their efforts to distance themselves became a little more obvious during yesterday’s hearing, when Ivanka Trump expressly backed ex-attorney general William Barr’s pronouncement that her father’s claims of election fraud were “bullshit”.
Ivanka Trump told the committee: “I respect Attorney General Barr so I accepted what he was saying”.
Trump’s base
The principal goal of the hearings is simple, said The Atlantic: provide a narrative for what happened on the day in question. But the underlying aim is “larger and more diffuse”: the committee will show Americans “how involved President Donald Trump was, and why we should care about one party’s complete and utter rejection of democratic norms”.
This, of course, will be “no easy task”. In the 17 months since 6 January 2021, Americans on the right have “hardened against reality”, the publication said. When polled in January this year, 32% of American adults said that Trump had “no responsibility” for the riot that day.
However, it is still possible the hearings may “penetrate the right-wing echo chamber”, the Atlantic concluded, which may be enough “to change hearts and minds”.
-
Holy mate-trimony: the rise of 'friendship marriages'
Under the Radar Young people in China, Japan and the US are saying 'I do' to platonic unions, to alleviate social pressure or loneliness and access financial benefits
-
Deportations ensnare migrant families, U.S. citizens
Feature Trump's deportation crackdown is sweeping up more than just immigrants as ICE targets citizens, judges and nursing mothers
-
Trump shrugs off warnings over trade war costs
Feature Trump's tariffs are spiraling the U.S. toward an economic crisis as shipments slow down—and China doesn't plan to back down
-
Deportations ensnare migrant families, U.S. citizens
Feature Trump's deportation crackdown is sweeping up more than just immigrants as ICE targets citizens, judges and nursing mothers
-
Trump shrugs off warnings over trade war costs
Feature Trump's tariffs are spiraling the U.S. toward an economic crisis as shipments slow down—and China doesn't plan to back down
-
Harvard stares down Trump's tax threat as other schools take note
IN THE SPOTLIGHT Higher ed is on high alert as the nation's premier university prepares to take on the fight of its life
-
Trump is not sure he must follow the Constitution
speed read When asked about due process for migrants in a TV interview, President Trump said he didn't know whether he had to uphold the Fifth Amendment
-
Trump's first 100 days: the reshaping of America
Talking Point The second Trump White House is 'less a new administration', and more a 'vengeful monarchy'
-
Trump moves to gut PBS and NPR in latest salvo against the media
IN THE SPOTLIGHT The president's executive order targeting two of the nation's largest public broadcasters comes as the White House seeks to radically reframe how Americans get their news
-
Trump judge bars deportations under 1798 law
speed read A Trump appointee has ruled that the president's use of a wartime act for deportations is illegal
-
Trump ousts Waltz as NSA, taps him for UN role
speed read President Donald Trump removed Mike Waltz as national security adviser and nominated him as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations