Previewing the January 6th Committee Hearings

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Matt Katz: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm Matt Katz from the WNYC Newsroom filling in for Brian Lehrer who's off today. Coming up on today's show, we'll talk about the latest on gun control at the federal level where the House passed legislation that apparently has about a 0% chance of making it through the Senate. We'll talk about that and more with a reporter from The Trace, a new site dedicated to reporting on gun violence, plus two very different sports-related stories in the next hour. One on what happened when two sports programs in a large Brooklyn High School merged. It's a tale of segregation, integration, equity, and high school volleyball.

New York sports fans, listen up, because longtime Mets play-by-play announcer, Howie Rose, will join us to talk baseball and hockey as the Mets, Yanks, and Rangers are all eyeing championships. First, tonight has the potential to be a monumental moment in American history, when the first of six planned hearings into the effort to invalidate the 2020 presidential election and prevent the peaceful transfer of power by storming the Capitol on January 6th, 2021. Those hearings happen tonight, the first hearing begins tonight.

The committee that is running these hearings is led by Democrats and just two Republicans. It will feature video interviews with Ivanka Trump, Donald Trump Jr, Jared Kushner, and new information on the proud boys. What will it all mean that the hearings will not be aired by Fox News? After all, this isn't Benghazi. How much can the information presented here really break through to the broader American public?

Here to preview the hearings are exactly the two people you want to hear from at this moment, Ilya Marritz and Andrea Bernstein, my former colleagues here at WNYC are the hosts of the phenomenal Pineapple Street, Wondery and Amazon Music podcast Will Be Wild, which is all about January 6th. Hey, guys, good morning.

Ilya Marritz: Great to be here, Matt.

Andrea Bernstein: Hey, Matt. Great talking to you.

Matt Katz: So glad that you're joining us, I have a long day ahead of you, really appreciate it. Ilya and Andrea have reported on Trump testing the limits of American democracy for many years since their Trump Inc podcast produced by WNYC. Callers, do you have any questions about January 6th or what to expect from these hearings, or what you're looking to hear about tonight? Give us a call 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Andrea, what's the point of this hearing, of these upcoming hearings?

Andrea Bernstein: Oh, I think there's a really big point to it, which is-- One of the things that's striking to me for all of the people who watched January 6 in real-time on their televisions, or through social media, and who have followed the news alerts in these last 17 or so months, who feel like, "Oh, I know everything there is to know," the number one comment we get on our podcasts, Will Be Wild, is, "Wow, I didn't know there was so much more to know about January 6, I thought I knew what I needed to know."

You take that, and you have the congressional committee with subpoena power with a thousand witness interviews, sworn under oath with, I think they're now up to 140,000 or something like that documents they've collected. These are things that, for the most part, we didn't have access to because we're not a congressional committee. We already know from what's come out in bits and pieces and court filings and other documents that the information they've uncovered has moved our understanding of what happened in leaps and bounds.

Here's the time, here's the moment to tell the whole story in all its fullness, everything they've found in front of a national audience, and put it all together. People like stories, they like a framing narrative. That is what the committee has said is going to do.

Matt Katz: Is the point to get this down for the historical record or is the point to get information laid out so maybe there could be more people brought to justice for what happened on January 6th?

Andrea Bernstein: I think the answer is yes.

[chuckles]

Matt Katz: Oh, yes.

Ilya Marritz: I just want to say I think it's a bit of all of it. One of the things that really struck me, there was a preview call yesterday with aids on the committee. One of things that really struck me is they talk about the ongoing threat to our democracy. They've really pulled this thing that happened a year and a half ago into the present tense. I think a big part of what they're going to want to do beyond establishing why that day unfolded the way it did, and the role of Donald Trump is to get people concerned that it's not over, to get them to really understand this whole thing is not over.

In the making of our podcast, Will Be Wild, that was actually the journey I think that Andrea and I went on where we thought we were looking for answers for the one-time in American history that a presidential transfer of power had not been peaceful. It turned out that this whole thing's stretched back further in time than we thought and really continues into the present day if you look at it from the perspective of the movements that made this possible.

Matt Katz: You guys have been deep in this for so long, a thousand witnesses the committee interviewed in preparation for these hearings. Ilya, is there one thing that you want to hear about? Is there an answer to a question that you have that you want to get? Is there some particular witness testimony that you're curious to get access to? What are you listening in on tonight?

Ilya Marritz: There's so much, if I had to pick, maybe the number one thing on my list would be what does Pence world know. What I mean by that is the Vice President had a very specific role on that day, which was to certify the counting of the electoral votes. For weeks, maybe even months, he had been the focus of this campaign of Trump allies looking for ways to stop, block, undermine the transfer of power. There were plans involving alternate slates of electors. Vice President Pence would have been at the center of any of these efforts, he was the missing piece for them. We know that in the days immediately before the 6th, the pressure campaign on him ramped up and up and up.

We also know that on the 6th, he was inside the halls of Congress, when the riot happened when the attack happened. We know that he was very concerned for his safety, his aides were very concerned for his safety. For me, fleshing out that picture, what people understood in real-time, I think could be immensely, immensely powerful. Of course, there's the additional element that Vice President Pence all through the Trump administration appeared as the ultimate [unintelligible 00:07:35] VP, who never really broke ranks with his president. At the final act of the presidency, he did.

We know that he did, we know that he refused to go along with any kind of plan that would've involved him, would've involved alternate slates of electors or delaying the vote or not certifying the vote or suggesting that something had been improper. That's what I want to understand.

Matt Katz: That will indicate how much of perhaps a hero Pence was in this pressure-filled moment on January 6th?

Ilya Marritz: It'll also indicate how much Trump and the people advising Trump got what they wanted to do, how they thought they could pressure Pence. There was a noose outside the Capitol, there were people chanting, "Hang Mike Pence." It's still appalling and shocking to think about.

Matt Katz: Andrea, if one of the points here is to see how closely the insurrection attempts can be pinned on Trump, my question is, you know better than anybody how Trump works, he probably didn't send a text to somebody saying, "Let's go get a mob together to go into the Capitol, hang Mike Pence and make me president for life." If orders came down from the President, they would have come more obliquely, right?

Andrea Bernstein: Well, I just want to pull back just one moment. What we have learned about Trump's knowledge since January 6 would have made us fall off our chairs and our heads explode if we thought about it all at the moment.

Here are things that we didn't know, or we knew just a little bit of it. For example, we know now that Trump called the Secretary of State of Georgia and said, "Please find me 11,780 votes." He said that on tape. We know that he directly asked the heads of his Justice Department to send a letter to state legislatures including in Georgia, saying there's a fraud investigation, don't certify your votes. Don't send them to Washington. This was right before January 6, it was the night of January 3rd in the Oval Office with the entire White House Counsel's Office.

We know that his former Attorney General, Bill Barr, and his former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said to him, "There's no fraud, there's no problem with the selection," and he pushed forward and kept saying it. We know that there was a point in time in which he talked about the military and/or the Department of Homeland Security steezing voting machines. All of these things are really, really stunning. We know right up until the end, he was trying to pull so many levers.

We've learned an extraordinary amount already. Some of what we've learned, we've learned from his chief of staff, Mark Meadows, who was cooperating for a little bit with the committee. There are records, there are things that we know. That said, Ilya mentioned one of the big pieces of Mike Pence, one of the things I'm really looking for, and especially tonight, is I think one of the big blanks.

I do think we now understand more about Trump's relationship with the justice department, we understand more about his relationship with the Department of Homeland Security, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, but one of the things I think we don't really have the pieces of yet if they exist is the answer to the question, was anybody in the white house apprised of the plans of the proud boys and the oath keepers, which we now know, again, this is something we did not know on January 6th, were quite well developed by early January.

They were planning to storm the capital according to justice department documents and indictments, they have it on the record that they're going in, they were planning an attack. The oath keepers were gathering weapons. They were planning to storm the capital. They had a clear understanding that they were going to try to delay the certification vote because they believed that if the vote didn't happen on January 6th, it wouldn't be valid and there would be a constitutional crisis.

Now, one of the big questions I have is why did the proud boys think that as was unveiled in an indictment this week? Why did they have the impression? Why did they have that fairly sophisticated, constitutional understanding? There are other loose-end questions about connections between the oath keepers and the white house. A big question that I have, and I'm hoping is settled quite soon is was there any kind of communication one way or another? To what extent was Trump and/or the people around him aware of plans specifically for this attack? Obviously, we know Trump tried all of these ways very seriously not to transfer power peacefully and came very close to succeeding.

Matt Katz: You're listening to The Brian Lehrer Show. I'm Matt Katz, filling in for Brian and we're talking to Andrea Bernstein and Ilya Marritz, they have a podcast, Will Be Wild. and we're talking about the hearings tonight or the hearing tonight that begins the official congressional look into January 6th. Callers, do you have any questions about January 6th or what to expect from the hearings, or what you hope to hear tonight?

Give us a call 212-433 WNYC, 212-433-9692. The chairman of the committee running these hearings is Congressman Benny Thompson, Mississippi Democrat who you spoke to, Andrea, in Will Be Wild. I'd like to listen to a brief excerpt of Thompson from episode eight of Will Be Wild.

Benny Thompson: History has a way of repeating itself and sometimes you have to reaffirm things that happen. I think it also says that even the president of the United States is not above the law.

Andreas Bernstein: We're about to find out. [laughs]

Benny Thompson: We are absolutely about to find out.

Matt Katz: Andrea, when I listened to this, it sounded to me like these hearings will determine whether justice is achieved or not. These hearings are that consequential. You indicated that much in your last answer right before I played the clip. Is that really what's on the line here? Is what we're about to find out whether American democracy is strong enough to not only sustain this attempted insurrection but also bring all of those who were complicit to justice?

Andreas Bernstein: I think, Matt, you and I have been covering Trump forever. The biggest question that we get is, "Well, is he going to be indicted, is he going to be convicted?" There is a long, long, long answer to that, but I think one of the really important answers for history is it's really, really important to know, to understand what happened.

That is a real form of accountability and not everything can be settled in the criminal justice arena. That said, I would imagine that some of the information, if it seems like it crosses the threshold and presents evidence of a crime would put a lot of pressure on the department of justice to take some action. I think that that is very much in progress to be determined. We don't know. As Thompson said, we are about to find out.

Matt Katz: We're going to take a quick break, be right back with Ilya and Andrea. It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm Matt Katz from the WNYC newsroom filling in for Brian who's off today.

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It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm Matt Katz from WNYC newsroom filling in for Brian today. We are talking about the hearing tonight on the events of January 6th. You guys indicated earlier in the show that January 6th was not the beginning of a thing. It was maybe the middle of a thing and I wanted to talk about something from the podcast where we get into this.

Ilya, if we're facing a grave threat to democracy in the form of those who doubt the veracity of democratic institutions like voting systems, where does January 6th stand in the timeline of that ongoing threat? The middle, the beginning, the end, I know you can't look into the future, but you also delved deeply in the podcast into the events of June 1st, 2020 and that is certainly on this larger timeline, right?

Ilya Marritz: Yes. It's an important point in the timeline. We started thinking of it as one six, January 6th, and six one which was June 1st so that's about six months beforehand. I first got interested in that date because immediately after the attack, people started noting the difference in the response, the law enforcement response between the riot at the Capitol and this protest in Lafayette square just outside the White House.

If you remember the summer of 2020, George Floyd had just been killed, murdered, I should say. There were racial justice protests sweeping the nation, there was one in front of the White House that got pretty raucous over the weekend and there was a small fire and a fence was torn down, but by Monday, June 1st, it had simmered down, people went back to their lives or their jobs or whatever.

On that day, Donald Trump, President Trump started pressuring his military to basically come out with a maximalist response to the protest, like a big show of force. What we showed in that episode was just how much pressure the president was able to bring to bear on the United States military really a bull work of our democracy, a pillar of our country. Within a few hours, the 82nd Airborne had been mobilized from North Carolina to outside DC. They specialized in airborne assaults. Thousands of national guard were arriving at the Capitol and were lining the edge of Lafayette square. In the end, the square was cleared by bureau of prisons and parks police and some other federal agencies and not the US military.

For those bull work people, guardians of the system, they were deeply rattled and all the more so because the secretary of defense and the chairman of the joint chiefs had been basically, I don't know if you'd say like hoodwinked or pressured or conned into appearing in a photo op with the president as he crossed Lafayette square which had just been cleared.

That was really a wake-up moment I think for a lot of responsible people in our government who really saw just how far President Trump would be willing to go to use the tools of government to enhance his political standing as he saw it and that got them really fearful [laughs] by the time January 6th rolled around.

Trump had been, and we see that across many agencies, Trump rattled so many agencies that by the time January 6th rolled around, Department of Defense, Department of Justice, Department of Homeland Security, all of them had acting secretaries. Below that, many of the leadership ranks won two levels down were also either actings or just filled positions.

Matt Katz: A lot of vacancies, a lot of people left around the time of the election, and in the months preceding. Let's go to the phone lines, Barbara in Brooklyn. You have a question for Ilya and Andrea.

Barbara: Well, thank you for having me by the way.

Matt Katz: Thank you for your call.

Barbara: Yes. My question is why is, or why are these hearings so important to anyone because people's minds are already made up. We watched a six-year-old testify, and we saw the senators tear up, and then when it was time to vote, they all voted along party lines. There Fox News and all the pundits are already saying these hearings are a sham. What's the purpose?

Matt Katz: Thank you. I think you were talking about the gun legislation, but your cynicism as well. Understood. Talk to the cynics, guys. Are we going to change anybody's minds by listening to these hearings?

Andrea Bernstein: I think even members of the committee from my conversations with some of them and their staff are sober-minded about where we are politically. I think that even if you look at their faces, when they were talking about getting to the bottom of January 6th, say, a year ago, I think there was a lot of sense of optimism. If you look at the members of the committee, now there's a fatigue that has set in and a world wariness, because they've been so attacked, particularly the Republicans on the committee. I also think that they're very much operating on an accelerated schedule where they've all but said, and court filings, we have to finish this by this year because we may not be around.

I think that they understand that. I think that it would be naive in a political context for us to not think like, okay, the Democrats want to sway things. The midterms don't turn out to be as disastrous as people are predicting right now for the Democrats but I do think something that is incredibly different from the way this committee is structured, which will make this a very different experience from anything that we've seen in recent history. You mentioned Benghazi at the top of the show.

The thing that's so different about this committee is that about a year ago, the Democrats tried to get a non-partisan commission, like the 9/11 commission. The Republicans blocked that. Then Nancy Pelosi appointed a Democrat-led select committee and said, the Republicans could have five members and the Democrats could have seven. Kevin McCarthy appointed people that Nancy Pelosi said, "These are not people who want to get to the truth. They're just people who are going to want to try to confuse people and spread this information. "They can't be on the committee."

As a result, there are these two Renegade Republicans, Liz Cheney, and Adam Kinzinger, that have all but been excommunicated from their party. There is a unanimity of purpose among the committee members, like nothing I've really seen in any political body in my recent memory where they really want to get to an understanding.

I think in terms of why I should we watch one of the answers is because we will understand a whole lot more than other things that we've seen in the political process. If people are watching to see, "Okay, is there going to be some moment that's going to shift everything politically?" They may be disappointed, but that doesn't mean that we aren't about to see an extraordinary and extraordinarily revealing narrative of history unfold.

Matt Katz: You guys, co-authored a piece in the New Yorker this week focused on two of the January 6th defendants. You talk about how many of them are jailed together and what they call the Patriot wing in D.C. Each night they sing the Star-Spangled Banner together, and they're viewed by conservatives on the outside as political prisoners. Meanwhile, there are actually more chapters of the proud boys in 2022 than there were in 2020. If those accused are being even more radicalized potentially, and if they're being treated as heroes and martyrs for the cause, it is therefore the far-right movement that led to one-6th more potent today than it was on the morning of January 6th, 2021. What do you guys think?

Ilya Marritz: I think there's a thing that happens anytime there's a big traumatic event, if you think of Charlottesville or something like that, which is that there's a law enforcement response. The leadership is often arrested or a lot of the key members are arrested. That's a setback, and extremist groups experience that as a setback, but at the same time, these kinds of events are a huge recruiting opportunity.

They're a huge opportunity to bring up new people into leadership and get new people motivated and spin, frankly, new stories about what America is and the path that it's on. From the people that we've spoken with. I don't really feel that we have an answer just yet where this is headed, but clearly, the militia movements, radical right-wing movements are still very strong. The ideology is still very strong in our country and from my contact with these defendants, they are unrepentant and fully convinced that this riot was staged with the cooperation of police. It's really interesting to engage with somebody who believes that.

Matt Katz: This was in order to entrap MAGA supporters.

Ilya Marritz: Yes, exactly.

Matt Katz: That's the theory.

Ilya Marritz: Exactly. That's-

Andrea Bernstein: Matt, if I could just jump in and answer to your earlier question about, are we in the beginning, the middle of the end of this? I think one of the things that Ilya and I saw, particularly in the latter part of our work on our podcast, Will Be Wild. For the story that we did for the New Yorker on the consolidation of right-wing extremists, I think if after January six, the Republicans who said we are going to ostracize Trump had followed through. The businesses who said, we're not going to contribute to anybody who voted not to certify the election.

Most importantly, if Donald Trump had just gone to Mar-a-Lago and talked about his newest business or whatever he wanted to talk about, but he hasn't. He has continued to pump out these incredibly powerful streams of disinformation even without access to Twitter. That has galvanized people. There is a hardening in the views of the American public about people who believe that Trump was really the president. Biden is not the president, and also among people who believe that violence is an okay way to achieve social end.

These things are going up. These things are increasing since January 6th. The forces that were in play in January 6th, haven't settled down because Trump is out of the white house. They're still around. The next attack may not look like January 6th, but I think both Ilya and I feel like for people who think it has dissipated, it was something in the past.

The answer is no, it's something that's ongoing and that we still need to contend with. Very much in the way prior to January 6th, we weren't thinking, what could the potential bad outcomes be? We need to have another assertive, real thought exercise about that, and ask ourselves, how do we want to prevent that from happening?

Ilya Marritz: I think this is really where the committee can play a huge role because so far the official government response, the biggest part of the government response has been in the department of justice charging 800 plus people with rioting at the capital and a variety of different kinds of offenses going all the way up to seditious conspiracy, but that's the mob.

The committee has the opportunity to help us understand what led to that mob, being there in the first place and the forces that were there supporting them and the forces that may have connected some of those groups and some of those individuals to the president. One of the really stunning things for me here that's emerged is how close the president was to these two groups that have now both been involved in seditious conspiracy allegations, the Proud Boys and the Oath keepers.

We know that the founder of the oath keeper Stewart Rhodes tried to get the president on the phone on the afternoon of January 6th. He failed, but he called somebody who he thought could get him through. That's one place removed from the president. We need to understand a lot better why Rhode thought he could get the president on the line and, what they might have discussed.

Matt Katz: Let's go back to the phones Howard in Manhattan. Hi, Howard.

Howard: Hi, how're you doing today?

Matt Katz: Doing great. Thanks for calling.

Howard: Yes. I just want to say if our presidents are not above the law, why Donald Trump is that perfect with it?

Matt Katz: That's a great question. I'm sure you guys have fielded this one before. Why hasn't Donald Trump been prosecuted?

Ilya Marritz: Well, he's had two impeachment trials, so there has been some accountability process for him.

Andrea Bernstein: I think that this is a question that has caused a lot of consternation. There are still active criminal investigations concerning Donald Trump. There's an investigation in Fulton County, Georgia concerning whether he illegally tried to influence the vote there. There's an investigation by the Westchester County DA, there is still nominally an investigation by the Manhattan DA even though the Manhattan DA grand jury that was by all accounts poised to indict Donald Trump was allowed to be disbanded by the new District Attorney of Manhattan, Alvin Bragg.

His office maintains that they're still investigating. I will say that Ilya and I have yet to find a former prosecutor for Manhattan who believes that, but there is still nominally that investigation. I think Donald Trump is, to use a Latin term, sui generis when it comes to criminal prosecutions. He doesn't cooperate, he doesn't turn over documents. He doesn't keep records. He will berate and frighten and accuse prosecutors of doing things that he has encouraged, which is politically motivated prosecutions.

We know that his justice department was pressured to do that while he was president, and yet that's what Trump accused everybody else of doing. He manages to wield these tools in this really masterful and I think really unique way. That said, I don't think it's over. I don't think that there's no possibility from either these hearings or from the other cases looking into his business that there might be a criminal prosecution. I just think he's a very, very, very difficult person to prosecute who has set up systems around him where it's very, very, very hard to create the necessary elements of a crime within the four corners of the law. Not that Donald Trump hasn't done the things that prosecutors describe him as doing.

Matt Katz: Ilya and Andrea, what I think Will Be Wild does so beautifully is toggle between the big picture, this threat to American democracy, and then the personal how the events of the day had just dramatic effects on the families of all of those involved. You guys have two more episodes coming out, is that right? What can we expect from those shows?

Ilya Marritz: Well, these are going to be a little different [chuckles] because they're bonuses. We're going to be watching the committee hearings and Andrea and I are going to watch them carefully and watch them with our particular Will Be Wild lens and share our thoughts with listeners with people who've already watched the series. We knew that the select committee was at work. We knew the select committee was going to be able to get information through subpoenas and interviews and stuff like that that we would not be able to, but we wanted to tell a story for the ages.

In time, I think it really broke down into two pieces as you alluded to, Matt. One was the hollowing out of government and the inability of the structures that were supposed to protect us to actually do their job when they had to contend with a lawless president. The other element was what happened to the body politic, what happened in American families and to ordinary Americans, and what would motivate a dad or a daughter or somebody else to go to the capital and risk everything and risk their lives for a lie.

If people listen to the podcast I think they're going to get that. I think that's really dramatic and interesting. It just so happens that as we have wrapped up the podcast, the 8th and final episode of the series came out on Monday, we have these hearings starting. Yes, we're going to do a couple bonuses on the hearings. I hope if you like the podcast, that you will tune in and listen to our take on the hearings as well. This is a chance to go beyond the headlines.

We know that there's going to be some made-for-TV moments and some really good drama that you're going to get in the newspaper and on TV. We're going to be listening to it a little bit differently, and really looking for some substantive stuff that connects with other pieces of the puzzle that we've already been putting in place.

Matt Katz: I'm sure you will. Andrea, give us a quick rundown of the schedule here. It's six hearings in total. First one is tonight, and what do we expect from all the [crosstalk]

Andrea Bernstein: There are three that have been announced, but everybody understands there will be six total. Two in prime time, the first and the last, which is now scheduled for June 23rd. Then there will be weekday mornings hearings four of them.

Tonight the understanding is that it's like an opening statement in a trial where the prosecutors are laying out the evidence, telling the story they're going to tell. Creating a narrative and really trying to have a gripping drama, and you and I have seen that you and I have seen openings of trials where you really get hooked, and you want to know what's coming next.

Then there'll be things that looking at for example some of the right-wing groups, looking at what happened in the justice department, looking what happened around the vice president, so that's what's expected to roll out over the course of the next two and a half weeks. One thing that I will say is that when we put together our podcast, we actually had no idea when the hearings were going to start. We kept trying to find out. We really, really, really worked our sources.

No one could commit, so we didn't know, and we made the schedule that the final episode would be dropping the weeks the hearing would start, but we tried to put it together, so that if you listen to it now, which I hope everybody does before the hearings or in the middle of the hearings or after the hearings, it will be an experience like reading a novel say that relates to 911.

Your understanding we hope will be so much deeper, and your connections to the characters that were around the events. That it will be something that is a useful companion to history at whatever moment you drop in.

Matt Katz: There is no question about it. My understanding is already so much deeper. You have done a service to journalism and the historical record in this podcast. It's just phenomenal. My guests have been Ilya Marritz and Andrea Bernstein my former colleagues here at WNYC, now the host of the phenomenal Pineapple Street, Wondering, Amazon music podcast Will be Wild. It's all about January 6th. Thank you so much, guys. Thanks for coming on.

Ilya Marritz: Thank you so much, Matt.

Andrea Bernstein: Great talking to you.

 

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