The Bipartisan United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack is set to hold its first hearing on Tuesday, and I admit that it will provide a kind of theater I’ve never seen in Washington DC before. I’m excited. The first thing that’s different is the committee’s makeup. Although Speaker Pelosi may still add more Republicans if any are willing, it’s presently comprised of seven Democrats and just two Republicans. The two Republicans, Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, both voted to impeach President Donald Trump for his role in the January 6 coup attempt.

Bennie Thompson (D-MS), Chair
Zoe Lofgren (D-CA)
Adam Schiff (D-CA)
Pete Aguilar (D-CA)
Liz Cheney (R-WY)
Stephanie Murphy (D-FL)
Jamie Raskin (D-MD)
Elaine Luria (D-VA)
Adam Kinzinger (R-IL)

Ryan Nobles and Melanie Zanona of CNN report “a growing group of rank-and-file House Republicans wants House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and GOP leadership to punish Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger for accepting a position from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to serve on the select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection.”

They are really upset that the Bipartisan United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack is actually bipartisan. Of course, they try to hide this fact by aiming their complaints in a different direction. They say their main objection is that Pelosi rejected two of the five members– Reps. Jim Banks of Indiana and Jim Jordan of Ohio– that McCarthy chose to serve on the Bipartisan committee.

This supposedly shocked Republicans in the Capitol even though there was never any chance that Jim Jordan would be acceptable to Pelosi or any other objective observer. It’s likely that he will be a focus of the committee’s investigation as they look into members of Congress who may have colluded with the insurrectionists.

Truthfully, McCarthy did not want any investigation and he instructed his caucus to vote against the creation of an independent commission on which the Republicans would have had equal representation. It was Senate Republicans who filibustered the independent commission and forced Pelosi to set up a committee of lawmakers.

Since McCarthy could not prevent this move, he chose to goad Pelosi into rejecting some of his proposed members in the hope that the committee could then be painted as a partisan witch hunt. That’s still the plan, but it’s a harder case to make when there are two Republicans who have volunteered to participate.

When the first hearing commences on Tuesday, Democratic chairman Bennie Thompson of Mississippi will make some opening remarks, and then Liz Cheney, the daughter of former Republican vice-president Dick Cheney, will follow with remarks of her own. In this way, she’ll look like the ranking member, although she’s not technically serving in that role.

First up will be two DC cops and two members of the Capitol Police who will testify to the violence and verbal abuse they experienced during the insurrection. This will set the tone. There won’t be any members of the committee arguing that the mob was acting like a typical group of tourists or were really anti-fascist protestors.

No one will be making excuses for Trump or arguing that the investigation is biased and should be looking at the violence and looting that accompanied some of the George Floyd protests last summer.

The lack of distractions will be welcome, although the news coverage of the hearings on right-wing outlets will surely include a huge dose of whataboutism and well-worn Trumpist lies.

I’m not used to congressional investigatory hearings that aren’t contentious. Maybe the 2005 investigation of steroids in baseball could fit that description, but this investigation is actually largely about how and why the Republican Party went insane, so bipartisan consensus is really remarkable.

Another welcome feature here is that the committee won’t have problems issuing subpoenas and won’t be issuing them to useless witnesses. Since the Justice Department is in the Biden administration’s control, we can also expect them to help the committee enforce their subpoenas, so we won’t have lengthy court battles involving witnesses who don’t want to appear.

Although, things could get interesting if members of Congress refuse to show up and testify.

Overall, this committee should be able to move quickly and without a lot of nonsense, and that will add to both its effectiveness and its credibility. It should be quite a show, and I can’t wait for it to begin.