Jan. 6 committee just made history. How will history judge it?

The congressional Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, which held its final public meeting Monday, was in many ways a pathbreaking legislative effort.

Its slick production raised the standard for hearing presentations. Its investigations produced volumes of evidence implicating former President Donald Trump and his allies. It kept the issue of culpability for the attacks in the media glare.

Its vote to refer Mr. Trump to the Department of Justice for possible prosecution of inciting insurrection and other federal crimes was historic: For the first time, Congress has urged criminal prosecution against a former or current U.S. chief executive. 

But the panel’s most lasting legacy may be its story. After all this time, it is still shocking to hear the details of the attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election, and its culmination in a mob smashing its way into the U.S. Capitol.

Brick by brick, the Jan. 6 panel has constructed an epic tale, from the former president, seemingly off-the-cuff, claiming he had actually won on the night of the election, to shouting matches in the Oval Office over false claims of election fraud, to Mr. Trump’s nonresponsiveness as the Capitol riot commenced.

We don’t know what history will say about this period of American politics. But the Jan. 6 documentation appears to be the kind of evidence on which history is based. 

In that sense the hearings were reminiscent of other noteworthy efforts, such as the Senate Watergate committee or the Army-McCarthy hearings of 1954, says Joanne Freeman, professor of American history at Yale University and author of “The Field of Blood: Violence in Congress and the Road to Civil War.”

“What resonates again and again and again in these public moments ... [is] if there’s a way to get a broad sweep of the public to see what’s happening, to think about what’s happening, and to watch at least some people stand up and say, ‘That crossed the line,’ that’s really important,” says Professor Freeman.

“No one should get a pass”

Still, the vote to recommend that Attorney General Merrick Garland prosecute Mr. Trump was the emphatic ending point to the Jan. 6 committee’s work. Possible charges listed were inciting insurrection, conspiracy to defraud the United States, obstruction of Congress, and conspiracy to make a false statement.

The panel also referred for possible prosecution five allies of Mr. Trump: chief of staff Mark Meadows, and lawyers Rudolph Giuliani, John Eastman, Jeffrey Clark, and Kenneth Chesebro. 

The committee believes there is evidence Mr. Trump committed serious crimes, and if the Justice Department concurs then he should be charged as other Americans would be, said Rep. Adam Schiff, Democrat of California, in a hallway interview with reporters following the hearing.

“No one should get a pass. The day we start giving passes to presidents or former presidents or people in power ... is the day we can say that this was the beginning of the end of our democracy,” said Representative Schiff.

The referrals are purely advisory, however. The Department of Justice has been carrying out its own parallel investigation of the Jan. 6, 2021, events. Newly appointed special counsel Jack Smith has taken over that investigation as it relates to higher-level officials. His timeline is unknown – any indictment could be months away.

Stanley Brand, former general counsel to the U.S. House of Representatives and distinguished fellow in law and government at Pennsylvania State University, says he believes the committee’s actions Monday raise questions of impartiality. They could allow possible prosecutorial targets to request evidence they think is exculpatory from the panel, says Mr. Brand, whose law firm has represented Trump administration officials.

“From a separation of powers standpoint, the committee has pushed the envelope way beyond what have been previous limits to congressional power, especially by wading into this whole area of so-called criminal referrals, which have no legal binding effect and which, in my judgment, taint any subsequent Department of Justice action,” says Mr. Brand.

The question of political accountability

The focus on Mr. Trump at the final Jan. 6 panel public hearing has certainly fleshed out a committee-drawn portrait of the former president as the center of the so-called “Stop the Steal” effort, says Sarah Binder, a professor of political science at George Washington University.

But the purpose of the hearings has always seemed to be not just legal accountability, but political accountability as well, says Professor Binder. In that sense, its work can be seen more broadly as an attempt to understand the network that was involved in the attempt to overturn the 2020 vote.

The panel’s work is “also focused on the myriad ways in which he seemed to have been aided and abetted by members of Congress, by connections to these white nationalist groups and the connections of his campaign and insiders, [and] on the question of security at the Capitol and what went wrong there,” she says.

Still, the whole point of the broader effort was about getting a narrow result: blocking the peaceful transition of power.

“That is a core element of what it means to live in an electoral democracy. It’s still shocking to students, like myself, of our political system,” says Professor Binder.

No smoking gun

One thing the committee did not produce was a smoking gun – clear evidence of wrongdoing that summarized a conspiracy. In the Watergate investigation, for instance, the release of a White House tape that showed President Richard Nixon and his chief of staff admitting that they had tried to block the FBI’s investigation of the Watergate burglary proved that Nixon had long been lying to the American public.

But what the committee did do was amass a large amount of material from interviews, emails, texts, and documents, and present it in an easily understandable narrative. 

“They revealed behind-the-scenes conversations and put those into the big picture,” says Barbara Perry, director of presidential studies at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center.

For instance, the just-released executive summary of the Jan. 6 panel’s report contains a section that juxtaposes quotes from officials talking about debunking particular claims of voter fraud, against quotes from Mr. Trump continuing to use those same claims later in public.

On Dec. 15, 2020, then-Deputy Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen told Mr. Trump he had looked into allegations that “suitcases of ballots” had been delivered to polls in Georgia, and it hadn’t happened. “It was benign,” he said.

A week later, Mr. Trump said publicly that in Georgia officials were “pulling suitcases of ballots out from under the tables.”

Later, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger spoke bluntly to the then-president about his continued Georgia claims.

“Well, Mr. President, the challenge you have is the data you have is wrong,” Mr. Raffensperger said.

Historical parallels

It’s not the norm in U.S. history for presidents or ex-presidents to be seriously linked to sedition charges. The closest might be John Tyler – but he had been out of office for years before he joined his native state of Virginia in seceding from the country he had once led.

Mr. Tyler served in a secession commission and was elected to the Confederate House of Representatives, but died before he could take his seat. (Coincidentally, he was also the first president against whom impeachment charges were brought.)

In the modern era, Watergate was “pretty bad – or at least that’s what we thought then,” says Manisha Sinha, professor of American history at the University of Connecticut. 

But the number and seriousness of the offenses surrounding the aftermath of the 2020 election surpass even those of Watergate, says Professor Sinha.

They involved blocking the peaceful transfer of power, and included the storming of the Capitol.

“Even though we’ve had instances of political violence in this country, especially in the South after the Civil War ... [Jan. 6] was still, for many Americans, something they hadn’t seen in their lifetimes,” says Professor Sinha.

Many Republicans have criticized the Jan. 6 panel for being biased. While it included two GOP members, they were not authorized to participate by Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. 

Video clips of testimony were at times edited to manipulate conclusions, according to some Republican House members. The very smoothness of the presentations, edited as if they were a documentary, could cause some people to distrust the information, says Professor Freeman of Yale.

But she says the committee did establish a line by holding the hearings, holding them publicly, presenting evidence in an understandable narrative, and relying mostly on testimony from Republicans.

The line drawn is “not necessarily a wall against misinformation, but it’s at least a stumbling block. And for the historical record and for the present, I think that’s really important,” she says.

Senior congressional correspondent Christa Case Bryant contributed to this report.