Shortly after President Trump pardoned nearly 1,600 people convicted in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021 assault on the U.S. Capitol, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) was asked his reaction. He said he would not “second-guess” the president’s pardons.
“The President made a decision, we move forward,” he said. “There are better days ahead of us. … We’re not looking backwards, we’re looking forwards.”
Nevertheless, the next day, the Speaker startled his colleagues by announcing he was forming a select subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee to further investigate the Jan. 6 attack with a view to taking a deeper look at such things as the security failures of the Capitol police and the flawed investigation of the original Jan. 6 select committee.
The Speaker said he would appoint Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.) as the select subcommittee’s chairman. Loudermilk, who previously conducted his own investigation into the matter as chair of the Oversight Subcommittee of the House Administration Committee in the last Congress, attempted to reconcile the Speaker’s two-directional responses above by observing that sometimes “you’ve got to look backwards to look forward.”
On Dec. 17, 2024, Loudermilk issued his second “Interim Report on the Failures and Politicization of the January 6 Select Committee.” Then, on Jan. 5, House Administration Committee Ranking Member Joe Morelle (D-N.Y.) released his own report as a rebuttal to Loudermilk’s.
The House seems to have a special penchant for birthing select committees to complement the work of its 20-plus standing committees. In the last Congress, for instance, it created select committees or subcommittees on the strategic competition between the U.S. and the Chinese Communist Party, COVID and the Weaponization of the Federal Government.
It wasn’t until Republicans took control of the House in 1995, after 40 years in the minority, that they abolished four select committees, all of which had existed for ten or more years: the select committees on Aging; Children, Youth and Families; Hunger; and Narcotics Abuse and Control.
What is it about select committees that so entices Congress to propagate them? There are many possible explanations. Sometimes there are problems that need to be addressed immediately. Sometimes there is a partisan promise or priority that needs to be fulfilled. Sometimes, a member or group cause requires special attention. Sometimes, there is a jurisdictional conflict between committees that requires coordination and resolution. Sometimes, a longstanding popular public obsession requires constant boosting. And finally, sometimes there is a valued member of Congress who has not been named a standing committee chairman and needs to be mollified with a select committee chairmanship instead.
In the Jan. 6 case, the prolonged obsession over what happened four years ago at the Capitol, fueled by Trump’s repeated stoking of accusations that the other party is spreading false narratives that he was solely to blame for the riot, has confused and conflated events in order to pin the tail on the opposing party’s mascot.
The likely explanation for Johnson’s reflexive move to create yet another Jan. 6 select committee was to take some of the onus off Trump for vowing throughout the campaign (and before) that he would vigorously pursue and prosecute his accusers at the Justice Department and on the original Jan. 6 select committee. Keep in mind that Johnson owes Trump at least one return favor for saving his speakership election on the first ballot on Jan. 3.
The Speaker has promised Loudermilk full support and funding for his select subcommittee. Nevertheless, former President Joe Biden’s preemptive pardons of the Department of Justice prosecutors and Jan. 6 select committee members has taken a lot of wind out of Loudermilk’s sails.
One of the Georgia legislator’s central aims, judging from his earlier reports and what media attention he has attracted, has been to persuade the FBI to prosecute former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), the ranking Republican on the Jan. 6 committee, for communicating with one of the witnesses, Cassidy Hutchinson in the absence of the latter’s lawyer.
The Speaker’s proposal for a select subcommittee must first be authorized by the full House before a chairman and members can be formally named. And then the special subcommittee must compete with others to ensure it has sufficient resources to do its work.
Whether the House is up to revisiting this seemingly interminable and circular chase after elusive shadows remains to be seen.
Don Wolfensberger is a 28-year congressional staff veteran culminating as chief-of-staff of the House Rules Committee in 1995. He is author of, “Congress and the People: Deliberative Democracy on Trial” (2000), and, “Changing Cultures in Congress: From Fair Play to Power Plays” (2018).
