How the January 6th Committee pulled it off
When the likes of Bill Barr, Jason Miller, and Ivanka Trump testified against Donald Trump to the January 6th Committee, it wasn’t because they wanted to. They didn’t suddenly wake up and decide to do the right thing for its own sake. Nor were any of them looking for revenge against Donald Trump. None of them even wanted to be there. Yet there they were, giving testimony that’ll help put Donald Trump in prison.
This victory by the committee didn’t suddenly come out of nowhere. It’s not an unlikely development. It’s not a surprise. In fact this outcome was more or less baked in nine months ago, when the committee decided to include Steve Bannon in its initial round of subpoenas.
The committee had to know that Bannon would refuse to cooperate, due to his various existing legal troubles. This would allow the committee to start things off by referring Bannon for contempt and getting him criminally indicted. This in turn would scare key witnesses into cooperating with the committee, for fear of also getting rung up for contempt. Why would someone like Bill Barr want to go to prison for a year, when he could simply rat Trump out and go home?
From the start, the committee’s strategy was never particularly difficult to parse. Nailing Bannon wasn’t about getting him to cooperate, which was never going to happen. It was about getting others to cooperate. Sure, it was a nine month process. These things take time. But this is how you win these kinds of battles.
