Pressed for reactions to Donald Trump’s pardons for Jan. 6 criminals, including violent felons, many congressional Republicans have at least tried to adopt a forward-thinking posture. For example, Republican Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, his party’s new Senate majority leader, said in response to questions about the pardons, “We’re looking at the future, not the past.” Republican Sen. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota, similarly added, “I’m ready to move forward.”
This remains a tragically flawed perspective for a variety of reasons — not least of which is that the scandal and its consequences are ongoing — but that didn’t stop House Speaker Mike Johnson from echoing the party’s preferred talking point.
“The president’s made a decision, we move forward,” the Louisiana Republican told reporters on the third day of the new Trump era. Johnson added, “We’re not looking backwards, we’re looking forward.”
Oddly enough, however, at the same Capitol Hill press conference, the House speaker made some related comments that completely contradicted his own misguided and unpersuasive line. NBC News reported:
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., announced Wednesday the creation of a new select subcommittee to investigate events before and after Jan. 6, 2021. ‘House Republicans are proud of our work so far in exposing the false narratives peddled by the politically motivated January 6 Select Committee during the 117th Congress, but there is still more work to be done,’ Johnson said in a statement. The subcommittee’s mission is to ‘uncover the full truth that is owed to the American people,’ Johnson said.
The panel will be chaired by Republican Rep. Barry Loudermilk of Georgia, whose name might sound familiar.
But memories can be painfully short in the political world, so let’s take a brief stroll down memory lane.
Around this time two years ago, as the Republican majority in the House got to work, among the earliest priorities for the party was a new, GOP-friendly investigation into the Jan. 6 attack. The endeavor would be led by Loudermilk, who faced some awkward questions about a controversial Capitol tour the day before the riot.
After launching his own Jan. 6 probe, the Georgia Republican’s first step was simple: He exonerated himself.
In the months that followed, Loudermilk said he intended to determine “what really happened” on Jan. 6, indifferent to the fact that we already know what really happened.
More than a year after launching the partisan probe, Loudermilk and his GOP colleagues released a report on their findings, which was effectively meaningless and broke no new ground.
The document appeared designed to undermine the actual bipartisan Jan. 6 committee, but it failed, and even most Republicans blew it off as irrelevant. Loudermilk and his cohorts set out to discredit the bipartisan Jan. 6 investigation and to expose shocking new details that would alter the public’s understanding of the assault on the Capitol. His bombshell was a dud. In the months that followed, Loudermilk continued to engage in half-hearted efforts — he even asked the Justice Department to launch a criminal investigation into former House GOP Conference Chair Liz Cheney for foolish reasons that collapsed under scrutiny — but by any fair measure, the entire endeavor was a failure. Congressional Democrats barely bothered to push back against Loudermilk’s “investigation” for the most insulting of reasons: They saw it as too boring and pitiful to warrant a full-throated response. It’s against this backdrop that the House speaker announced his brilliant new idea: Johnson wants the same congressman who failed in his Jan. 6 investigation in the last Congress to keep going with his failed Jan. 6 investigation in the new Congress — while simultaneously telling the American public that congressional Republicans are “looking forward” and leaving Jan. 6 in the rearview mirror. The last GOP-led House was an embarrassment to itself. The early evidence suggests the current GOP-led House will be no better. This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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