Nancy Pelosi’s commission should do to Trump what Republicans did to Hillary Clinton

On Monday, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi announced that Congress would attempt to create a “9/11-type commission,” offering a deep-dive into the events surrounding the January 6 insurrection. The commission, the Speaker said, would investigate the causes of the attack, as well as the people involved with its execution. Such an investigation would not be limited to average citizens, and would almost certainly include an in-depth look at the politicians who inflamed a fraught political moment. 

Trump, Cruz, Hawley, Brooks, Boebert: this means you.

There’s a reason Pelosi specifically referenced 9/11 in her call for an independent investigation. Following September 11, 2001, a bipartisan commission came together to learn the details of the worst tragedy in the nation’s modern history. That particular commission was, in truth, a political détente, in which members of Congress cast aside political grit in favor of the national good.

We are in a different moment now, though; a moment in which Senators will fail to convict a president of obviously impeachable offenses, only to make speeches minutes later excoriating said president for the exact same crimes. What would prove beneficial in this instance, then, would be something approximating the harsh-toned andRepublican-backed United States House Select Committee on Benghazi, which began its hearings in September of 2014 and which was chaired by partisan Congressman Trey Gowdy (Gowdy is now a host on Fox News). That committee and its hearings were ostensibly about the 2012 attack against United States government facilities in Benghazi, Libya, in which four Americans died. 

During the Benghazi hearings, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton answeredeight hours of questions from obviously hostile members of Congress. Her composed performance has been lauded by her supporters — and even by those who consider her to be a part of American history, rather than as a part of the American future. Those hearings, in all their partisan hackery, provide a striking comparison to last week’s impeachment hearing, which lacked an equally fierce questioning of the 45^th president, despite the fact that the insurrection lasted longer and claimed more lives than the Libyan uprising. (Also unlike Benghazi: the insurrection was executed by Americans.)

The impeachment managers could have called Trump to testify during the second impeachment, by way of subpoena (the 45^th president declined a voluntary invitation), but a protracted legal battle would have stymied Congress’s legislative momentum, and the country needs help. The truth is now left up to both criminal prosecutors and independent committees to discover. And discover it we must.

An independent interrogation in Congress will require fewer bodies, and, with no timeline, members can wait out a subpoena for as long as it takes. Can the former president make it through eight hours of testimony and questioning without lying or bloviating? Most people believe that Secretary Clinton’s measured response is something that Trump is incapable of replicating. And a poor performance may be enough to indict him in the court of public opinion, which in some ways is the only court that matters when it comes to the country’s future.

Apart from a conviction for crimes committed, after all, what the United States really needs is a frank and open discussion with the former president regarding the events of January 6. Some have intimated that we’re better off forgetting about Trump, but to forget him is to forget the horrors of his administration. Should we wish, truly, not to repeat the chaos of the past four years, we must study it. We must get the president’s words, in all their indecency.

The Benghazi commission, as it turned out, unearthed nothing new. But subjecting former President Trump to eight hours of questioning would almost certainly complete a necessary narrative. It would also put Trump on the record for his behavior leading up to the events of January 6, and it might make him unelectable in future political contests. That final point is, perhaps, the most important. A Benghazi-style commission would help draw the poison out. Democracy dies in darkness — so bring the former president out into the light.