U.S. House Select Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson doesn’t need unsolicited advice from little ol’ me on how he does his business.
Too bad. I am going to give him some anyway.
Mr. Chairman, I am acutely aware that the clock is ticking on your 1/6 investigation. Which makes me implore you to get your probe done sooner rather than later.
You must ignore the happy talk among Democrats who have stars in their eyes and who are thinking they can retain control of the House after the congressional midterm election. The fate of the Senate is another matter. The House, though, remains vulnerable to a Republican takeover of leadership of that legislative chamber.
That means if the committee’s work is unfinished when the new Congress convenes in January, the new Republican leadership is going to scuttle every damn thing the panel did. It will toss all the evidence it has collected implicating Donald Trump in the insurrection and his effort to deny the peaceful transfer of power to the Biden administration.
A new GOP House speaker is going to launch investigations of his own into the panel’s conduct. There might even be efforts to impeach Attorney General Merrick Garland. Believe this, too: The Trump cultists who comprise the Republican Party will have vengeance on their minds if they seize control of the House.
I say all this to remind the chairman that he has to finish the committee’s work sometime this fall. The committee is set to reopen the public hearings next month with a new round of witnesses. They are likely to add even more evidence to the growing pile of it already gathered through hours of public and private testimony.
The panel might ask former Vice President Mike Pence to testify. Fine. Do it and then get him to spill whatever beans he can under oath.
Look, Mr. Chairman, time is not your friend. It is your relentless enemy as you seek to finish your work, compile a report and present it to us — and to the attorney general.
He must not be deterred by whatever blowback he gets from the diehard cultists who stand with the insurrectionist in chief. They have loud voices, but so do the rest of us who want to make sure those who are responsible are held to account for the dastardly deeds they launched against the government they all swore an oath to protect, preserve and defend.
