GOP Plan to Rehash Jan. 6 Riot Risks Darkening New ‘Golden Age’

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) beamed Wednesday morning that a “golden age” had arrived amid excitement about what Republicans could now deliver.

He brushed away questions about President Donald Trump’s sweeping pardons for Jan. 6 rioters, saying “we’re not looking backwards, we’re looking forward.”

Less than four hours later Johnson announced a special committee that would reinvestigate events “preceding and following” the assault on the Capitol four years ago.

In doing so Johnson reopened one of the deepest and most divisive wounds still scarring Congress. It puts GOP energy not into tax cuts, inflation or border security, but trying to rewrite the history of an event witnessed by lawmakers, police, and journalists, documented on live television and video recordings, and memorialized in sworn testimony, extensive evidence presented in trials, and rulings by conservative and liberal judges alike.

Johnson’s move illustrated the central question facing Republicans and their newfound power: Do they want to use their limited political capital to make laws that address the top issues of the 2024 election? Or satisfy Trump’s thirst for retribution?

At best, the first days of the Trump administration suggests that they’ll have to try doing both. The president has moved swiftly to purge checks and balances, exact revenge against perceived enemies, and reward his allies, including those rioters who assaulted police and tried to undermine the foundations of US democracy.

Trump’s been more wobbly when it comes to working out the finer points of legislative packages to extend his tax cuts or enact tougher border laws.

Turning to Jan. 6 before even settling on a legislative strategy carries risks for Republicans. They won power — but narrowly, particularly in the House, and all polling indicates it was based on frustration with prices and lax security at the southern border. Not to relitigate a riot at the Capitol.

At almost the moment Johnson made his announcement, the DC trial judge who oversaw many of the Jan. 6 criminal cases issued an extraordinary order declaring that Trump’s pardons “will not change the truth of what happened” and that she wanted to ensure “that what transpired on January 6, 2021, can be judged accurately in the future.”

Johnson himself, in a statement shortly after Jan. 6, 2021, called the rioters “a lawless mob of criminals.”

Wednesday he said he believes in redemption, even as critics of the pardons, including the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial board, detailed the assaults by some of those freed by Trump. (Among those the Journal highlighted was a man who’d used an “electroshock weapon” on a police officer’s neck).

Johnson’s move reinforces the fact that he’s more MAGA and more reliant on Trump than any of the top Congressional leaders before him. He was a key architect of some of the legal arguments behind the GOP’s attempts to stop the election certification in 2021, counted on Trump to help him retain the speakership this year, and is now hopeful that the president can help him wrangle his conference to pass bills.

His move to indulge the president, announcing that his new investigation will expose “the false narratives peddled by” the earlier January 6 Select Committee, reflects that symbiosis.

It’s impossible to overstate how much Jan. 6 still shadows relationships in Congress. Democrats still seethe over their colleagues’ attempts to overthrow an election, and then whitewash an event that put many of them in personal danger. Some still have personal nightmares about that day.

If Johnson is hoping to get Democratic votes for any early measures – such as funding the government or lifting the national debt limit – this is a bad way to go about it.

Even before the committee was announced, Democrats said Trump’s actions show the hollowness of the promises to look after people struggling with high prices.

“What the current president did in pardoning these folks who assaulted police officers was massively disrespectful to law enforcement,” said Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), the House’s fourth ranking Democrat. Of all his sweeping actions, “none of them lower the price of eggs.”