The big lesson to take from the Jan 6 committee ahead of 2024

The hearings are as much about the future as they are about the past, writes Chris Stevenson

Donald Trump (AP)

“I think it’s been devastating,” President Joe Biden said following the ninth public hearing (plus one preliminary session) of the House of Representatives committee looking into the events of 6 January 2021. “The case has been made, it seems to me, fairly overwhelming.”

That “case” being the accusations put forward by the committee, using the testimony throughout the hearings, that former president Donald Trump personally helped incite the Capitol insurrection and sought to overturn the 2020 election. As you might expect, Trump – whom the committee voted to subpoena – has called the hearings a “charade and a witchhunt”.

Thursday’s vote is likely to have been a coda to the public hearings, depending on what happens regarding the subpoena, and will certainly be the last one before the November midterms. But the vice-chair of the committee, Liz Cheney, was very clear in the opening statement of the hearing that the impact of this work will be felt into the future. Not least the next presidential election in 2024.