In the wake of the government shutdown, some Republicans may use their free time to rewrite the narrative of the January 6, 2021 Capitol insurrection, reports Salon.
"Since we all saw what happened in real time on live television, this may mark their most ambitious attempt yet to bend reality to President Donald Trump’s will. But it’s not simply about satisfying the president. House Republicans seem intent on revenge," Salon says.
According to a report in Politico, "a new House panel will re-investigate the Jan. 6 Capitol attack with an eye toward recasting the narrative about the events in Washington that day" because Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) believes the original committee that investigated it "was rigged."
The new investigation, according to Johnson, would be a "committee investigating the previous committee," led by Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-GA), who according to Salon, "apparently seems to think that nobody really understands what happened."
"I’m pretty sure we know how and why it happened. We all saw it with our own eyes, and there are hours of horrific video footage from nearly every possible angle," writes Salon's Heather Digby Parton.
"Trump’s followers were all worked up over his big lie that the 2020 election had been stolen by President-elect Joe Biden and the Democrats," she added.
As for what the Republicans think they will discover in their investigation of the investigation, Digby Parton says, "there is no mystery to be uncovered."
Loudermilk, she writes, is simply obsessed, saying he "is partially justifying his ongoing obsession about Jan. 6 as if there was some dark cover-up. As chair of the House Administration Subcommittee on Oversight, he’s been working the angles on this story since 2023, claiming that he couldn’t get the cooperation he needed to really get to the bottom of it."
Trump, she says, listened and managed to push a "reportedly reluctant Johnson to convene a new select subcommittee that will give Loudermilk subpoena power."
And while other right-wing conspiracy theories sprouted by Trump and Johnson about that day have been debunked, the Republicans still think this is a good idea.
"I can’t imagine why the administration would consider it a good idea to dredge up the nation’s collective memory of Trump’s worst day in office, when he was truly toxic for a brief moment in time," Digby Parton says.
"Since he announced his first bid for the presidency in 2015, Trump has exhibited a remarkable ability to make a lot of people believe a demonstrably untrue narrative if he repeats it often enough," she adds.