The January 6 Insurrection Hearings Are Just Heating Up

When hearings began a month ago, it seemed like it would be a quieter summer. Many of the biggest revelations appeared to have been leaked before the hearings began, and the six to eight scheduled public sessions were expected to last only about two hours each.

James Goldston, a former ABC News executive, created a multimedia roller coaster that mimicked a prestige TV series, in which each episode reveals deeper twists and turns and more corruption and outrage. Liz Cheney and Cassidy Hutchinson were the summer's biggest stars.

The testimony so far has been very damaging to the former President. The committee has the goods and knows how to package them. The committee will hold two more hearings this week, one on Tuesday and the other on Thursday, which will be its second prime-time hearing.

The public has a sense of the scope of misdeeds and damage to American democracy as a result of the tick-tock of the Trump administration's chaotic build to January 6. The events had resembled what the country had gone through during Trump's four years as president.

The country can see that there was a way to Trump's madness. The events from early November to January 6 were much more organized and sinister than previously known.

There is irrefutable evidence of crimes and criminality.

It seems that there was a lot of crime in the days and weeks leading up to the riot at the Capitol, and Trump's aides seemed to know that they were headed towards a criminal reckoning. White House counsel Pat Cipollone told Hutchinson that if the President was allowed to go to the Capitol, they would get charged with everything.

January 6 was the final attempt at a coup that had failed in every step until that point.

The committee has painted a clear picture of the administration's efforts. The hearings have revealed a seven-part coordinated effort by the Trump White House to weaponize every public, political, and governmental tool at his disposal to hold onto power in the face of an electoral loss. He tried to undermine the legitimacy of Joe Biden's victory, encouraged states to overturn valid election results, and tried to install election-doubting loyalists at the Justice Department. When all else failed, Trump encouraged his supporters to flock to the Capitol and then stood by without taking any action to stop the insurrection.

Trump knew what he was doing and was told repeatedly that it was wrong. The January 6 riot was the final attempt at a coup that had failed before. The fact that so many of the participants, from members of Congress to, according to Hutchinson, White House chief MarkMeadows himself, apparently sought presidential pardons for their actions in the Trump administration's final days makes it clear that there was a guilty mind. The Justice Department has brought charges against more than 800 people involved in the riots at the Capitol, including charges of seditious conspiracy against some of the white nationalist militia members. None of the people charged have been in Trump's circle.